Crows
Jessica Cuello

She landed hard.
I was cushioned by water

and blood. The sky falls,
black pieces flapping.

Hundreds swoop. I react
to them as if to a man, body

bearing down. Birds drop
like striking hands. Her fear

entered me. I remember:
still, in my mother.

Jessica Cuello is a poet and French teacher in Central NY. Her first chapbook, an autobiographic poem cycle about scientist Marie Curie, came out in 2011 from Kattywompus Press. Her poems have appeared in such journals as RHINO, Tampa Review, and Copper Nickel.