Poetry: Jason Cooper

Somewhere in Bahrain

Cormorants in amber light
Breed where nothing
Exists save sand — and winds
Like those in the legends
Almasy recounts for Katherine —
Oil-black birds with nothing to fear
But each other cannot but construct nests
At equidistant removes from the hooks
Of the beaks of their neighbors — a kind
Of suburban sprawl — from the air
A honeycomb, a birthmark along the sand,
Leaves in a teacup — an omen thrown
In bleached bones