Two Poems by Gibson Fay-Leblanc

Crows

Seventeen pairs of wings –

shadows without bodies in morning light –

settle on a flat school roof and a needle-less pine.

A chant that falls into shouts and calls,

each small muscular body giving every cell

to sound that wakes for blocks.

A few, then twelve or ten, fall off,

then all save one atop the pine,

urging them on, insisting.

His call is the bass-line

they all pick up again—din rising quick

from earth and lake and beetle in the grass.

He knows this drum

like his own beak. He has seen

and will speak to the part of us that listens.

Reading Hart Crane on the Internet

Right after For we can still love the world ,

a virtual square entitled Exotic Girls

appears: in leopard print bikini,

she covers her tan with three triangles

the size of paper footballs

made by eighth graders, reverence in her stare.

You can click her back to the ash heap

filled with girls on hoods

with six-packs – and finish the poem

or choose her place of origin from the list:

Tahiti, Barbados, St.John – see how long

until an offer is made, payment required.

How long will it be before a hologram

saunters into the bedroom—you and your lover

speaking the language you invented, or think you did—

and asks you both with wetted lips if you'd like

a Budweiser? She will be wearing nothing

or next to it, to make you forget

everything and your lover cover herself

as if the true Eve has appeared.

You wonder if we can still love the world

and when Crane stopped. You see him tilt

another rye—the one

that will make his dive over the railing

perfect, in its way– the Atlantic's black

covering his entrance

before anyone can miss him.

Gibson Fay-Leblanc