2 December 2003 | Vol. 3, No. 4

Crow

by SARAH VAP

                   –after Ristovic

I found the lost ice fisher with his glassed-in face. A human light, a field of frozen water. Wrapped in fur, thinking of his horse. Thinking of something else entirely: Wild cows in a silver wood.

He's a man from whom I expect a lot, such as he should pay me a visit. Should count his mammals and carcasses. Put turtles the size of coins in his pockets.

He's a man, he says, who counts his eggs before they're turtles. Moves eighty tons of rocks to find the gold for a tooth. Frees right whales from fishing gear and kisses the nurse shark right on the eye.

I pulled him from his cube of ice and that afternoon we pocked the fields with open-pit lakes and sold cyanide at the bird market. We ate the bass that ate the antimony.

Wildest arms where it is dark enough. Exhausted gophers break the horse's leg. The unmarried, their gray body hair, lengths of it spooled. Finally he bares his plump breast, and the crow lets out a sigh.