Beastly Bestiary

By A. Tad Strange

Eels in high heels! Buttery manatees!

A squid who's a jerk! Hip bats! Flatulent dragons!

Wombless wombats! A lucky moonlit possum! A slow sex-starved he sloth!

Tricky ticks! Spiders with bad-girl allure and hourglass waists! A jazzy goose! The snuffling snowbeast!

And that's not all-Frustrated roosters, gizzard nibbling lizards, and sentimentowl owls!

These and many other curious creatures populate the perfectly peculiar poetic menagerie of A. Tad Strange.

In the great tradition of poets like Ogden Nash, Marianne Moore, and Edward Gorey, Strange's strange 21st-century bestiary offers a roaring good time, horselaughs aplenty, and the inevitable purrs of cuddlesome readerly contentment.

With slitheringly seductive wordplay, strange molts words into new meanings. He hatches high-soaringly delightful lines and swallows common-sense headfirst until only a smile remains and the piggy toes of reality are left wriggling.

Beastly Bestiary-A tender treat of soft chewy poems guaranteed not to create intellectual indigestion or starve one's funny bone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 25, 2007
• ISBN: 9780595877157

A. Tad Strange

A. Tad Strange lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He may be reached at [e-mail].

Book preview

Beastly Bestiary

A. Tad Strange

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

Beastly Bestiary

Copyright © 2007 by A. Tad Strange

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any

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The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views

of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-43389-6 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-87715-7 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-43389-8 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-87715-X (ebk)

FOR

EMILY & Z.

Well might the ferrets rush wildly for the fireplace

and get hopelessly jammed in the chimney.

—The Wind in the Willows

Kenneth Grahame

Contents

SEER

GOOD WITH JELLY

THE OPTIMIST

IMMEMORIOWL

JERK OFF

BOOMER

THE DECISION

SINCAT

WHITE TRASH

HIPPOPOTAMUS

B N Y

STARFISH & WADING BIRD

SEA URCHIN

LION OF EARTH

CROCODILE & WHALE

SNOWBEAST

ECHIDNA

YOKED

SQUIRREL

PERFORMERS

OVERCOME

BAT

LOVERS

WOLF

SPIDERS

GOOSE

KANGAROO

LEONINE

BUNNY (Alternate Takes)

ROOSTER’S LAMENT

NO PORPOISE

IZZIE & LIZZIE

OLD MASTER

ARNOLD & SALLY

WANDA THE IGUANA

LOST WORLD

DODOS & KOMODOS

UP STREAM SWIMMER

THE GIRAFFE WHO IS NOT GERTIE

LADY WOMBAT

EGYPTIAN HAWK

THUNDERBIRD & POSSUM

WHITE MOTH

HE SLOTH & SHE SLOTH

ROACHES AND THE RAIN

WOOLY MAMMOTH

HIGHEELS

TICK, TICK, TICK

THE BABY BADGER’S ALPHABET

FISH

DA DACHSHUND

HUNTER

SEER

I like to see from my eagle’s eyrie

The world at twilight with my mate.

I puff my clean chest out. I scowl and glare about.

I see the furrowed fields in furthest farms,

I see all things blind to fate, calm, unalarmed.

For miles about in haystacks dumbly stout,

Mousies’ eyes, black, all peep so blankly out.

I make no sound, my wings swept cunning down—

GOOD WITH JELLY

Pillsbury Crescents:

Eight albino manatees

Heaped up hot.

Flaky butter beasts,

Joyfully

With milk

I extinct you.

You’re useless mammals,

You floating sea camels.

How now, swamp cow?

So long, dugong.

O, yeasty inhumanity.

THE OPTIMIST

The night new—

I caught you, firefly.

I reached out to you,

Cupping you gentle,

Your tender touch tickling,

I stroked your wings, sides, tummy soft—

Your antennae wands cast spells.

Luciferin luciferase—A chemical reaction:

Your tiny engine glowed.

Unstoppable silent—Explosion—

Bioluminescence:

The emission of visible light by a living being.

Done, you left between the bars

Of the home