THE RAVEN IS HOARSE

Mona's Raven
It might be that Mona Lee was losing her mind. Astride her bolster, looking out the French windows, not able to fly away, her gaze turned inward; she wondered what sanity really was, and if she could keep it while people were dying, others working so hard, while she was ordered to be old and lazy. Netflix and Amazon were failing to divert. Spring beauty was everywhere outside. The green of it never failed to raise a wisp of happiness, so she took it in, breathed it in to feel gratitude. Wkwak, wkwak, a great raven, so much larger than any she had ever seen swept the proscenium of her view, whacking his wings on trees, back and forth, with wild purpose of some kind. The raven, the raven, the word raven and the computer that was the brain spewed up speeches, standing before directors being Lady Macbeth. She laughed at herself the actor, the woman, the lover, and all the speeches that still speak in our heads from five centuries ago, from lips that will be as cold as Yorik's soon. Remembering, not remembering she made her own:

The raven himself is hoarse
and croaking the news of
What?
Duncan is not coming
under my entitlements
I will not be queen.
Gone thick night, where
morning steals the thoughts of hell
Is there any purpose left?
​Sexed or no sex?
Kill or be killed?
Nature gives no hoot or holler
for woman's milk or gall or
homeless squalor
Mother crows are feeding,
Raven the great and sleek
is diverting
a cat
without a collar
and hungry seagulls from the coast.

DAY TWO