Get It in Gear
The Crows Start Demanding Royalties
Please, I beg you to click over and read Perillo’s poem!
There’s so much to love about this poem! Including that it is written by a woman who drops a sly slam against male poets who have written about crows. (I’m looking at you, Ted Hughes.)
Perillo sees crows accurately, but she doesn’t envy them. She feels compassion for these “Little Elvises.” These birds with so much brain and such great hair and so much talent — how sad that they are stuck in an avian body. Can you imagine what havoc Crow would wreak if he did have arms?
And I think Perillo identifies with what she sees as Crow’s frustration. Perhaps she has felt like she can’t do anything but “smash a phone against a wall.” Poor Crow can’t even do that.
Then Perillo turns the caw not into a lament but into something primal: a scream. Life isn’t fair. Scream on — Perillo hears you. And although I don’t have a muscle car, I do have a stick shift. Hop in, my corvid friends, and I’ll put my fist on the shift and throw it in gear for you.
