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-ninth installment is presented this week by Jacqueline Kari.
XXIX.
Lashes fall like tears.
Birdwolf is the guillotine’s mistress.
She pushes a button or looses a rope to fell
a head. Mostly, she severs limbs from
tree trunks; she prefers flesh. Peer into a neck
hole, Birdwolf: see the sun head-on.
Birdwolf alternates subjects when feeding the
guillotine. She turns the subject to face
the trees, then to sky. Sometimes,
they cry and plead. She turns them
face-down. They die red-faced.
The guillotine squeals and spits back
the bones. Its blade blisters with blood. She sees herself
in its smile, face and apron smeared.
Birdwolf smiles back.
X out—no, XX out your eyes.
Jacqueline Kari is the author of The Book of Tell {dancing girl press} and Litel Myn Tragedye (forthcoming on Birds of Lace). Her poems, translations and visual art have appeared in Action Yes, Tarpaulin Sky, RealPoetik and elsewhere. She lives, studies and makes Montessori curriculum materials in Athens, GA.
