[Poetry] Two Poems by Jennifer Lagier

Brandt’s Cormorants

Ghoulish cormorants

forage California Current,

plunge forty feet below ocean waves,

skewer their next silvery meal,

feast on bass, rockfish, shrimp.

Sepulchral black sea birds

haunt brackish lagoon.

They dive toward fleeing water bugs,

devour baby carp, tiny frogs.

Dripping Adams Family avatars surface.

Reptilian feet clutch dead limbs

of submerged eucalyptus,

rotting snag shrouded in mist,

uprooted by storm.

Brown Pelicans

Smirking pterodactyl descendants

congregate in airborne chevrons,

soar just above spindrift,

scan ragged coast.

At Moss Landing marina,

one ungainly buffoon breaks formation,

flaps to descend,

unsuccessfully attempts

foolish power line landing.

Webbed feet slip.

Brown pelican doofus

cannonballs into otter-strewn bay,

stuns a school of fish,

scoops up squirming dinner.

Jennifer Lagier lives a block from the stage where Jimi Hendrix torched his guitar during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. She taught with California Poets in the Schools, edits the Monterey Review, helps publicize Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium reading series. Jennifer has published twenty-two books, most recently Weeping in the Promised Land (Kelsay Books), Postcards from Paradise (Blue Light Press). Forthcoming: Illuminations (Kelsay Books).