[Elizabeth Soto, Associate Editor: I find myself thinking a lot about the vulture’s call, “Daughter, daughter.” I wonder if the daughter is a dead thing too. Or maybe if it is a call for her to take her place, to scavenge, to become like Mother. We shun vultures for doing what they must, for feeding from the dead. But their purpose lingers in the back of our minds, hisses from the sky, it calls to us. “Daughter, daughter.”]

She lifts from the dead

thing she was eating 

in the road and hulks gargoyle

large on the corner of a house. 

I look into her flushed face.

She flicks her wine dark

wings at me— 

not at me, the spring breeze. 

Her eyes scan 

for the things we

kill when we are

driving. 

Sunbaked roadkill, dried gristle,

blood streaks her beak 

almost dark enough for me to see. 

She cleans the bones. She’ll clear the road. 

I pass her slow. 

She hisses, Daughter, daughter.