Raptor

Abstract

Raptor Stella Lee (bio) White cloud sighs stretch across a cornflower horizon. Saturday afternoon feels like a cage as the fan drones on and the bars soldered to the window cut up my view of the world outside. I look out and lazily scan over the same vista: snow, ice, buildings, brick, glass, skeletal tree branches. Day in and out the panorama is the same, same expectations of sunlight glistening, same small puddles on the rooftop, the generators humming. This grey landscape of asphalt dotted with pockets of crystalized water makes a runway to you. I see you. Redtail, white belly, onyx talons, piercing beak. Your slick feathers are like a fading dream. In the heat a carcass whistle. You float and feathers circulate, your curved beak bears the final rites of your prey. Wild and fierce, you perch upon my rooftop. Entrails leisurely plucked apart from the chest. You tear into tendons and cover your wings in blood, your talons dig and dance deep into flesh. There is no longer a body just bones and muscles animated by your hungry movement. I want to get closer to hear you tearing and pulling. Your powerful muscular yellow legs stained in prey. [End Page 81] Stella Lee Stella Lee is a bisexual, Puertorican mother, wife, teacher and Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn poet. She is a fall 2021 Brooklyn Poets Fellow and Cave Canem Fellow. Copyright © 2022 Pleiades and Pleiades Press