Madison Rahner

Fiddler crabs explore a caverned crow corpse:
blue-black feathers, wrecked beak. Dead long enough
I can’t smell it as the setting sun warps
wings—poised as if still flying on this pluff
mud death bed. I kneel on soft earth and sink
to the sound of my mother’s resident
voice in my head. Lullaby, warning: Think
of diseases—she grows ever distant—

carried by death and birds. Childish as ever,
I pause to mourn, fit a new ache between 
my breasts. Sundown hides the dark forest’s clever
heart in cricket song, fog, and the dew’s sheen.

I loose eight onyx feathers to the breeze,
count crow bones, smear breadcrumbs of blood on trees.

 

Author Bio

Madison Rahner is a poet and biographer living in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she received her MA in Writing from Coastal Carolina University. Her poetry can be found in The Threepenny Review, The Normal School, and Popshot Quarterly.