a brief history of birds of prey she said by Mara Adamitz Scrupe were I eagle red tail hawk or any kind of raptor/ from the Latin rapio – you guessed it – to seize or take by force as though * threatening loving chiding * she said it & meant it: a birdlike dinosaur survivor from the theropod period meaning a meat-eating T. rex or feathered Archaeopteryx of the Late Jurassic era one-hundred-fifty-million years – from this perch/ from my stick-built arboreal nest my talons outstretched to keen I’d tear any vertebrate figurine down to dusk * swift dash cull * inescapable victim/ or were I instead she said a stone slab an articulated tile or some kind of tectonic shift/ my earthly plates uplifting a billion years back * as alp or butte ridge or range * – more than plain/ she’d said/ the cumbrance of embrace – were I Vesuvial/ a coital eruption/ the gray or purple of molten phyllite & slate interlaced with banded quartz – from the Chilhowee Group of Catoctin Formation/ columnar up the sides of these oldest of mountains – in my fissibility my beading easily shivered with the proper tools: * break iron punch & scriber * I’d make a roofing slate perfectly in severed strata as such of my silken cleavage – were I dominated planarly were I fragile as rat gnawed concrete were I the storyteller in some precise art with twenty names each for rain & snow & wind in explicit parlance in my oratorial patois – I’d tell a score each of anger/ sadness love the piercing of a human heart from my solace in the intrinsic patience of this land I’d draw the gathered multitude a rendering that simple English could not possibly challenge * in hell of hot/ quinta of noiseless voices * were I the I in the power * threatening loving chiding * she said – I never fought I let him take me/ fuck me in a starless suburban motel – relishing my right to it – to my first person to my own positionality to my own living life/ this/ this is my story/ she said surviving surpassing as an elephant of leviathan memory or even bigger/ better Jefferson’s incognitum en famille/ protected or grieving not eating other animals nor caging nor isolating nor torturing were I she said a very young calf withstanding slaughter or the bones & teeth of that massive unnamed animal found at Big Bone Lick or as well another in South Carolina – enslaved Africans pointed out the resemblance – were I decoder or philosopher or explicator of affinity or only myself in specious self-defense after all placidly bobbing my recollective waves: just a one-time physical thing between strangers no victim no violator just a Lake Travis trailer park because I could quickie coup de grace drop-off busted screen door slap
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Mara Adamitz Scrupe is a writer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. She has authored six prizewinning poetry collections and received numerous creative grants and fellowships. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her poems have been published in national and international literary magazines and have won or been shortlisted/ nominated for Bridport Prize (UK), Canterbury International Arts Festival Poet of the Year (UK), Forward Prize for Poetry (UK), Rubery Book Award (UK), Brighthorse Poetry Book Prize (USA), Fish Prize (Ireland), Aesthetica Award (UK), erbacce-press Poetry Book Prize (UK), Plough Prize (UK), Periplum Book Award (UK), Cornwall Festival Competition (UK), Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s Award, (Australia), and National Poetry Competition (UK), among others. Her poetry and essays have been published worldwide in literary journals and arts periodicals and her environmental installations, sculptures and artist books are held in the collections of international museums and sculpture parks. Mara co-directs Low Rent Pictures, an independent film company producing documentaries about rural America. She serves concurrently as Lance Williams Resident Artist in the Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas/ Lawrence, and Dean and Professor Emerita, University of the Arts/ Philadelphia. Mara lives with her husband on their farm bordering the James River in the Blue Ridge Mountains countryside of Virginia. https://www.facebook.com/mara.scrupe https://www.instagram.com/marascrupe/