White Skulls

 

by kerry rawlinson

Photo by kerry rawlinson. Used with permission.

 

a thousand quail-chicks flurry
around my ankles like water.
I am awash in birdmeat, bodies at
my feet

chirp in pigeon-pidgin,
picking at threads of comprehension
through my fracturing bones
of speech.

Their fluffing smothers our comfort
with weary dread. Only you
can carry us, they cry, but we’re dead
tired.

They peck out our unseeing eyes,
they shit in red bowls of thirsty hearts,
pick our skulls clean with beaks
of blue.

They bear our white skulls to the beasts,
carry them back to before.
Before slaughter mattered more than
insight.

Our smiles are fixed wide in the moonlight,
understanding why we grin.
White skulls make fine incubators for
hatchlings.

 

 

Decades ago, autodidact & optimist kerry rawlinson gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. Fast-forward: she follows Literature & Art’s Muses around the Okanagan, barefoot. She’s won contests (e.g. Geist; Postcards, Poems & Prose; Fusion Art;) and features lately in Pedestal, ReflexFiction; pioneertown; Centrifugal Eye; Minola Review; CanadianLiterature; AdHoc Ficion; Adirondack Review; amongst others. Visit: kerryrawlinson.tumblr.com