Carrion Song

Even now I think 
of your red featherless face, 
your unscarved neck as taunt as an axe sheath—
picked clean as my uncaged spine.

I watched you take the smaller birds 
under your wing, 
then smear your crown with warpaint 
to ward off the hyenas who pine for blood 
along littered highways.

Your flock mediate between life and death. 
Your guild bridge the Old World and the New 

but for too long you’ve been maligned 
and judged unclean, 
tarred and feathered, banished to your wake. 
No song to sing, no call or defense— 
your voice a hiss of black wind 
carrying the scent of poppies.
 
The world you cleanse passes us 
in bright, shiny cars 
as we build a temple on the side of the road. 
They call you a henchman, a stooped goblin,
but we know you sacrificed a head of feathers 
to lift the sun beyond the mountaintops
when it burned too close to earth. 

They do not know you are the queen of the throne. 
They do not know the volcanic acid in your gut 
can strip the paint from their bright, shiny cars. 

They do not know 
that somewhere a woman holds a black feather 
that guarantees the safe delivery of her child 

while you scavenge me to the sky, 
taking my tongue as your song.     

Witch’s Spell

The spells are getting worse
especially at night—
indigestion, difficulty swallowing
a static swarm of reflux,
all of which leads to bad dreams: 

last night 
she was a badger 
trapped in the crawlspace 
of its burrow. 

The animal council was there, too 
holding court as if at the devil’s pulpit, 
persecuting, badgering: 

if you followed the zoning laws 
this never would have happened,

and then suddenly someone 
in the council, maybe the white-tailed deer, yells— 
smoke it out, smoke it out
and then someone else—
burn, burn, burn

and when the witch awakes 
to a day as flushed as a rosy-cheeked oven, 
she knows she should see the family doctor 
about her heart.

Fish Out of Water

Will I be stuffed with cosmos and carpet roses
like a straw man, my hours anchored 
to the unsung eye of Sunday painters? 

Will I be cast-off and scuttled, my ribs 
sifted by divers in search of souvenirs? 

Propped on wooden stilts 
in the hollow of the salt marsh, 
I am a fish out of water. 
The green tidal grass bends 
like waves against the bow. 

The squall of blistering paint 
started below the waterline, years ago
it spread like a ditch of cancer. 
My old friends stopped coming by. 

Saltmarsh sparrows flit from the cow licks 
tufting the holes in my hull. Everywhere: 
swaths of salt and rust, barnacle colonies. 
Memories stopped coming by, too.

Did I fill the harbor to receive the Blessing of the Fleet
before a run to Georges Bank? 
Did I lay traps in the cold waters off Vinalhaven? 

When the wind blows 
I rock in my wooden chair, 
watching the light and shadow 
wind along creeks and channels.  

Soon I will see the settlers harvesting salt marsh hay,
their scythes swinging in the late summer sun—
haystacks piled like burial mounds across the tide. 

The Truffle Hunter’s Complaint

     Heart-shaped, my nose, I hold it aloft 
like a scepter before settling down to business 
     at the perfume organ. 
I bury myself, my trowel as smooth as polished bones,
     in a scent map of soil and fossil, springtails, glacial stones
pestled in the earth’s fungal spleen. 

     I bury myself
beneath a hazelnut tree
     the earthen-flax swabbing my snout 
with a hint of rain and autumn chill, 
     a scent like love 
geosmin 
     but there is nothing here 
but dark wood, dark water, and a cluster of wood blewits
     holding their breath.   

     I root the beech wood, quarrying layers of earth 
and time, because I alone divine the secrecy 
      of the forest. 
I am the sacred pig. The White Sow. The mystery 
     of Demeter’s cult. 
   Down, down I go, burying and unburying myself 
until at last I find the note

a musky black diamond coiled like a ram’s horn 
     around an unforgiving root. 

     And I should knock him to the forest floor
with his bucket of swill for bringing the hounds, 
     the way they poach and bracket the ground 
too loyal, too eager to show their craft. But unable 
      to read the trees. Still, there are two of them 
and only one of me. And I am not man’s best friend. 

     But who is to blame for this, I ask? 
I am no slovenly earth butcher. It’s you who dragged me
     to distant lands, fattened me, penned me 
and muddied my name.  

A Witch Takes Cure in the Waters of France

I’m nursed on mud 
     harvested from the clay beds of Abrest 
and soaked in the springs of Vichy 
     until blue algae is like a cradle
in the golden bough. 

The days are marked by rituals—
     mineral water, steam, sugar cubes 
wrapped in oiled paper,
     and the moon, pink as a braided onion 
draped over the handlebars of a bicycle,  
     shapes the movement of animals. 
The night stalkers ambush. 
     The scorpion turns blue. 

I show up for breakfast 
     in my robe and shower shoes,
read the regional papers 
     eat a breakfast of root vegetables. 
According to Napoleon, carrots are the obligatory vegetable 
     of the sick. 
I learned this from Germaine, the water girl, in 1906. 
     She ladled prescribed beverages 
from a wicker holder,
     and like a suicide filled her pockets with stones 
to keep count of how many tonics 
     the curistes consumed. 

These days it is self-serve terroir. 
     There are vending machines 
that sell plastic cups in the Hall des Sources
     where we gather like school children 
at a soda parlor apothecary 
     to sip from the Earth’s cauldron, 
a healing hell-broth simmering under the flame 
     of Hecate’s torch. 

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Damon Hubbs lives in a small town in Massachusetts. He graduated with a BA in World Literature from Bradford College. When not writing, Damon can be found growing microgreens, divining the flight pattern of birds, and ambling the forests and beaches of New England. His work is forthcoming in Book of Matches, Young Ravens Literary Review and Eunoia Review.

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