The Cormorant

My mother told this story
about a trapped wolf.
Wolf, wolf, over and over,
so I retell it with a cormorant.
Beautiful if a little ungainly,
the bird eats fish, which
wriggle half-out of its mouth,
scales like polished dimes.
The cormorant straightens
its neck, and the living fish
glides down. In the story,
the hungry cormorant stalks
around a fence-line looking
for a way in. It finds none.
It digs. Its hooked beak eats
away the dirt until there is
a large hole through which
it fits its head and neck
and nothing more. It slides
back and forth until it rests
in an arc of dust. It rotates
its head and sees a kitchen.
From inside, the cormorant
looks like an odd snake.
Cormorants are semi-aquatic.
Their diving wears away
the soil from the roots.
The trees fall. The cormorant
is pinned. The person grabs
a spade and drives it through
the base of the cormorant’s
head—then they see the snake
is feathered like a god or
something cursed, which it is.
The person leaves. The bird
decays. Dirt covers the corpse.
Weeds the dirt. My mother
has been gone a long time.
I like to think she ran away,
if we crossed paths she would
adjust her hair, and I would see
her ears, not as I remember,
but pointed, furred. Her black
eyes, her teeth a single blade,
her beakish nose. I would know
her story. It would hang from
my mouth, a wriggling tale,
when I tell it to my friends.

Brian Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). They have work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. They are an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.