Ear Worm I’m at the stage where I’m humming the thing between lip and lung my breathy tongue slips and curls under the tune without woodwinds or throat, or sparrows. It winds up my brain slithers out my ear, weeps down my cheek. All the while my mouth remains tight and the worm, finding the small gap between my teeth, sings free CROWS When I saw them approaching I believed they were human but really they were hats with twisted hands holding torches— and then someone somewhere spoke about a “murder of crows” erupting before the sun rose red over the ruined city and I knew— this is how the world flies apart this is how the winds blow back against the eagle building her nest in a barren tree and how the hatted hands torch the tree’s dry bark but really if you think about it it’s not about kneeling or reporting it’s all that clawing all that squawking it’s about the crows and how they morph into murders.