Picaroon Poetry - Issue #17 - July 2019

Christopher Hopkins
Yellow beak
On the sands
we pass a carcass of
a sea bird,
dried and belly burst.
Unnatural
to see it this close.
The worked yellow flint of the beak,
its only recognisable form.
The bleached rub of exposed
wing bones,
now whiter than the
torus nest of feathers
that once was its chest
and the gather of weathered
pellet edges;
the shrimp & fish
of its plastic suppers.
The down shivers
in the intimate winds,
ghostly twitch of the starving
brimful,
a stomach full of death.
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