.

I'd rather be run over by an SUV than see them crow look at me

Crows flock over the city.
Their cackle chased me down
Broadway many times the past week
with a worry that I am next
on their search for garbage, dead birds
homeless beards and leftover
preserved hamburger in a dumpster.
The crows caw-aw-ah to their territory, over
my head, below the sun. I'm haunted
as if Edward Gorey reached down
from a time machine vortex and named them
Ida, Kate, Fanny, Basil,
Timothy Geithner, Sallie Mae, Bart Stupak.
The powers that be gather for crow
intelligence. The crows bend
their skulls down to eh-aw
me below their Nosferatu limb tree.
They boast their freedom,
their money, their ownership of my ovaries.
One day I'll pay in to another
garbage heap. Their dinner will be set.
They'll laugh all the way home
as I am gasping for air by the coffee shop
as I am running deep into SUVs and traffic
as the last of my change and books
turn over like pebbles, as my plastic
shoes reign over their short lifespan.
I'll fall to the fate of my past;
they're all dead, decomposing
under smug crows and fertile mud.