Crow Line

In the ditch, a plastic bag hunches
and shifts like a human body, slack
handle caught on a cattail, soft belly
swollen with wind; I see the iridescent
plastic, skin-colored and split in half
like a magician’s amorphous assistant.

I’ve been here before. A crow
on the power line above me caws,
and I remember the call: how it rose
in quakes and seemed to match
the bird’s shape as inexactly as shadow.

Meanwhile more crows land and arrange like
handfuls of wet black silk on the line beside it.

Both times, where a sun-bleached pole
joins the lines, I’ve seen something
misconnecting, sending sparks to the asphalt
like roaches from a burning townhouse.

Feet from the flame on the sizzling line,
both times, the crows watch it happen,
hot-footed, and yawn—like they know
what they’re doing, or they don’t care
at all.

Anna Elise Anderson is an artist and teacher in Nashville. She earned her MFA from the University of Florida. Her work appears in Metropolis, Southern Florida Poetry Journal, Hobart, Quick Fiction, Broken Pencil, 491 Magazine, Treehouse Magazine, The Oakland Review, Grasslimb Journal, Charlotte Viewpoint, WUFT.org, Hearty Magazine, and Smokies Life.