The Aurora Review

Winter/Spring 2005

Rue by Amy Bouse

On Starving
by Sherri Ryan

There is a murder of crows
hovering over the town tonight,

the moon cool as butter cream,
opaque as lunacy, and I can savor

only the chimera of milk lining my throat,
and my brother's over-ripened brain,

rancid inside and out:
the maggots able to eat.

The canvas of Leningrad a still, dim
gray as I thrust his body onto the green

sled, pulling it into the pits. The trucks
come to haul the dead away like lumber,

rotten wood that lies stiff in the permafrost
of Siberian soil. But later, looking on

at German prisoners puppeteered through Red Square
as normal, wretched human beings,

their squiggly earthworm arms flail
in the sunlight, waiting for rain.

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