Animals as Inspiration

I am often inspired by nature, especially the behavior of animals; therefore, one of my favorite sites to submit work was Animal: A beast of a journal. Although this journal no longer exists, the work I published there is in a chapbook Old Woman and Eel, Ravenna Press, Triple Series. https://ravennapress.com/

Another animal prose piece about parrots was published in Raleigh Review Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 2017 titled “The Soul of a Parrot,” p. 7. It is also published in the chapbook.

I experimented with form in these pieces, dividing two of them into a number of vignettes. Here is part of one from “Soul of a Parrot”:

“We are red Macaws,” said the Bororo Indian husbands of central Brazil. “Our wives try to tame us, but we are wild by nature. We live in the homes of our wives; yet, we long to hunt in the forest. Our wives’ brothers own our names and claim our possessions, and thus we dream of flight. The words we say are not our own. We repeat what we hear.” In a patriarchal society, wives carry large pocket books and dress in colors as bright as the colors of parrots. In a matriarchal society, husbands mimic words of mighty women and eat crackers. . . .