CROW FICTIONS
Must a crow be ragged?
If it is not ragged, then
what good is it? A crow
must be ragged. Yes, as
we know, crows are
ragged. So, any man
who wanders black
highways, burning up
like a cigarette in the
face of a girl thirstily
kissed for the first time,
was of course dusty and
sweaty, bedraggled, as
ragged as a crow. Crow-
ragged, you might say.
We proceed
with fiction:
A novel has
a suspenseful
beginning.
Crows are ragged.
Crows cry nevermore.
Crows die once in a lifetime.
Crows wire messages
by tapping their crow's
feet. Smart quotes
resemble smart crows. Crows
cry like they're shouting
obscenities. But
the obscenities are
in quotes because we
don't shout obscenities
without reason, only
when there's a reason,
and then sometimes we
cry. We are like crows.
In that respect and in
the other respects we
are like crows. Crows
are like us, too, in some
ways, more like us than
we are like ourselves.
They live long, they
have feathers. They
have wings, they fly
around.
– from ALPHA DONUT : The Selected Shorter Works of Matvei Yankelevich
