Hatchling I Poem by Morgan Michaels

Like a designer brooch
of pink mache, pinned to a lapel
you fell, little Icarus, this
morning and plopped
atop our rail.

Til on closer view,
at recognition's cue
horror grew and grew.
and fascination, too,
no less than the disgust-

A chimera division
leaving a viewer torn
between the urge for looking on
and a notion
to be shut of you for good.

Poor bit of failed flesh
with grappling feet
strangely large:
a dainty for the crows to eat-
a raw and dangley clam;

Your head fused to a wedge-
Your noggin set with blind, twin
mounds, linked to the ball-
abdominal,
off which winglets sprout like leaves,

Like little mustache brushes,
flush with nascent plumes;
your head starting feathers
rolled and bound like unsold umbrellas
on a day forecasting sun.