Aubade with Need to be Picked Clean
Savannah Bradley
The wine in me spills over into morning. I wake on the couch in orange dawn, blue glow in my home. Three crows cawing, cracking the collapsible ribcage of a mouse, ravage an empty tree branch. I open the window and I open myself to them, wait to be next. I beg them. There’s still some meat to me left, I swear, there’s something left here to be gutted− something to please, please take out. A single claw, tugging tendon, strung out and pulled taut, snapped back. A breeze blows in and strands of my hair fall around my face. They hold me like hands, a thumb’s light brush across my cheeks. When the crows don’t come I slam my hands against the glass, reach for my own throat.
Savannah Bradley is a Kansas City based poet and graduate student in the M.F.A program at University of Missouri- Kansas City. Bradley is the recipient of the Durwood fellowship at UMKC and also has work in or forthcoming in Bear Review, Barrow Street, Moon City Review, Barzakh Magazine and The Shoutflower.