Chattering Crow:

Chit chat chatter chatter
caw! Caws a corvid. Not enough
words in your language for crow-talk.

Do you want to know why I got my beak bound?
Why I got banished for banter? Yes? No?
Crows never give a yes or no answer

because words are slippery things,
sliding from our mouths like maggots
becoming flies their truths already transforming.

They are like morsels tossed from beak to beak –
meat from corpses that float like corks
downriver and out to sea fit not even for seagulls.

Caw. Caw. Cough. Cough. Choke. I was never
a chough, a raven, or a rook, doomed,
exalted to crow instead. One word

too many was my undoing. What?
You’ll never find it amongst the chatter.
Easier to find a maggot wriggling in a corpse.