Dear Mapping The Edge (MTE) Collective:

I’m participating in April’s National Poem Writing Month as organized and managed by NaPoWriMo.net. Follow my writings here as normal posts, or go to the link to read my posts as well as the work of other NaPoWriMo participants.

NaPoWriMo means writing and posting a poem per day for the thirty days of April. I’m officially on the hook. Expect a mix of structured poems and poetry-prose pieces, some serious and dark, and others light and humorous. Even though it’s been said that fine art doesn’t do funny, I do.

It’s good timing because you’ll be introduced to characters and settings you’ll read more about later in my post-NaPoWriMo stories that combine images with text.

Inspiration for the following came from findings by paleontologists who named a new extinct creature recently dug up in the southwestern United States. Proper pantoum followed by another version of the same idea.

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Anzu Wyliei

Paleontologists give “Chicken from Hell” a proper name

Anzu Wyliei, Feathered Demon, remains found in Dakota’s Hell Creek

This 10-ft long, 6-ft tall, 600-lb turkey with 5-inch claws and armored head

Overstayed its welcome from the Cretaceous Period and remains with us now

…

Anzu Wyliei, Feathered Demon, remains found in Dakota’s Hell Creek

Imagine a Thanksgiving feast if Anzu were alive and pecking today

Overstayed its welcome from the Cretaceous Period and remains with us now

Our subdominant species become the presidentially-pardoned ones

…

Imagine a Thanksgiving feast if Anzu were alive and pecking today

Anzu family toasting thankful for roasting us wrapped in the fetal position

Our subdominant species become the presidentially-pardoned ones

Over centuries tasting over-civilized but moderately easy to gnaw

…

Anzu family toasting thankful for roasted us unwrapped from the fetal position

Still remains fact that to Found Father T-Rex all living things taste like chicken

Over centuries tasting over-civilized but moderately easy to gnaw

Thank God for the universal law of extinction

…

Still remains fact that to Found Father T-Rex all living things taste like chicken

This 10-ft long, 6-ft tall, 600-lb turkey with 5-inch claws and armored head

Thank God for the universal law of extinction

Paleontologists give “Chicken from Hell” a proper name

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 Anzu Wylie

Anzu Wyliei, Feathered Demon, may everything but your voice remain what we call extinct

One hot day I hope to trip over your sound found deep in the dirt of a canyon lost

I don’t care to see you but life’s living is vanity having never heard your voice

Speak fear and I run in terror hearing not seeing this chicken from hell

Watch as I run beyond canyon’s edge walking onto air before falling

Body first followed by elastic neck a later my slingshot head

Vanish me into a dot of dust like a falling anvil

Beep Beep me but stop just short of killing

You feathered demon; you hell’s chicken

Win over my Wyle E. Coyoteness

You Anzu wylie varmint

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