“Poe-ish”
Written by: Robert Hooks
Not too many years ago on a delightfully gray and misty winter’s day, I found myself drunk. Being refused more drinks at the dive, and perhaps having consumed certain other things, I left and wound up in the lower part of a large 200-year-old graveyard. I don’t remember sitting there so one can imagine my surprise when I realized I was lying face down trying to breathe in damp cold earth. Struggling to get my balance I sat up and saw sitting above me on a century old shrine was a disgusting crow of some kind. One of his eyes was missing, his beak broken, and his right wing appeared torn and infected. Yet, he just sat there staring at me judgmentally.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“Clearly you can’t,” the bird responded with what I believed was an undeserved haughtiness in his ugly little voice. “Well, I mean besides continuing to entertain me would be nice. Perhaps you could roll over and demonstrate once again how to breathe in dirt.” The crow had tickled himself with that one and cackled as best he could through a broken bill.
“Shut up you hideous creature,” I said (tried to say anyway). “Go away!” I then snapped aggressively.
“And if I don’t?” the bird mocked. “What will you do? You can’t even stand. Oh wait, I know. You will write a story about me. If you write it at least I know no one will read it." He made himself laugh again.
"So, you are not only a talking bird but also a prophet?" I asked.
“Does that mean you really are going to write the story? Let me guess, you will set it here in this cemetery and try to make it all Poe-ish, with you as a tragic figure. Not having the courage to partake in drink and other things as a kid, you found yourself too weak to stop doing so as a middle-aged man. It writes itself you know?”
Finally able to sit up, I snarled at him, “If I was Poe, you would be something beautiful and elegant like a healthy stately raven instead of a gross and dying corvidae!”
The crow slowly turned his head to look me in the eye and said evenly, “If you were Poe, you would be published.”
I had no idea birds could purse their beaks. Just as he had no idea that even in this state, I had precision aim as I threw my phone at his head and so ended the Taunting Sybil of Saint Peter’s Cemetery.
Some will say he can still be found there. And they are correct in a way... Should you find yourself in Oxford, MS about equidistance between the graves of W. Faulkner and L. Lamar, and a couple of feet to the east of certain Mrs. Davenshire, RIP date August 14, 1892, you may find a small patch of ground with grass slightly greener than the rest around it. For what so fertilizes the soil like the slowly rotting corpse of a blind prophet and a witty crow.
