Birdwolf is a new year-long project authored by the collective Entropy community. It is a collaborative online epic poem written by the Entropy community on a weekly basis. A different author will write the next stanza or section of the poem each week, to be posted every Tuesday, following the previous post from the previous week, and following a very limited set of guidelines (that each author has one week to write the next piece after the previous week’s installment goes up, that the installment should build from the previous section’s content and form, and that contributions should range between 8 and 24 lines or be a visual work).
Follow the entire epic poem here: Birdwolf.
The twenty-seventh installment is presented this week by Adrienne Walser.
XXVII.
With a heavy heart Bird-wolf soared upward, her loud grief-song filling the night sky.
Blue-black she disappeared; her craggy wings, the jagged branches of tall evergreens.
Those on the ground felt unsure, the rancid taste of blood in their beak-less man-mouths.
Whether it was the blood of those they had killed or their own blood, it did not matter; these men without memory were inoculated against sorrow. Wailing did not touch them.
Fear did follow and they lay down flat on the cold pavement with their arms outstretched.
Though covered with armor of reptile scales, their bodies shivered, scared when the grief-cries of Bird-wolf found rancorous company. The crows had come. The song changed.