Laren McClung

In the age of the fish, cobblestones shift through a square & in hand turn old weapon — beyond the city an ocean swings in pelicans & spinner dolphins, leaves them on the Peruvian shore, or in a small town two thousand blackbirds fall from the Arkansas sky “just like last year” — but far off in the silence of the rural plains this cow wallows on a grassy mound till a muzzle merges from another world, onlookers gawk along a picket fence as she pushes the head & two hooves & then stands to open for the calf that makes way with a message — a woman in the shape of a cloud saying return to your people & tell them I am coming.