NewPoetry

Andreae Callanan

Gannets perched up top, stately, still.
Carved polystyrene crags, coastline
grasses massed and paint-spattered

to look for all the world like shit-matted
nests. Eggs everywhere, some tucked
around the stationary feet of razorbills

and turr, some untended and conspicuous.
Smashed shells, smashed whelk, smashed urchin,
upturned empty carapace of crab. Dirty

shafts of fallen feathers, spare, barbless.
Bones scattered, stripped with oceanic
proficiency. A gull with wings frozen

mid-flap, the silver arc of a caplin
clutched in its beak. Charcoal guillemots
in cliffside holes, earth-black and curled

into themselves, like city pigeons.
Among the curated mess, a cracked
rubber baby bottle nipple, dry-rot dumbtit,

mottled grey and greenish, nearly
camouflaged against the simulated stones.
Midway down the rock face, puffins:

posed as though about to launch
themselves in their graceless way
into the graded blue of the display’s back wall,

into the brushstroke line meant to signify horizon.
Above it all, two metallic sprinkler-system
stars shimmer in cool fluorescent light.