Ilona Martonfi’s most recent poem to appear here was “A Man on Puget Sound” (October 2016)

Fish Crow
By Ilona Martonfi

Endemic urban scavenger bird
coastal and tidewater regions.
The mud of a river
—hunting of
carrion, crabs, shrimps
turtle eggs and nestlings
frogs, spiders, tree fruits.

Remove eyes from cast lambs
penetrate through umbilicus or anus

black with blue-violet iridescence
sharp hook of the upper bill
hunch and fluff their throat feathers.
Nasal, hoarse “ark-ark-ark”
double-noted “uh-uh” call.

Fresh plucked sticks:
bowl filled with soil, cedar bark
paper, leaves, or pine needles.
Nest built high in a conifer
two to five eggs laid. Pale blue-green.

Mother hen molting in late July.