David Jalajel


11 SNAPSHOTS FROM THE ARK (DRAGONS)

     “Human interests cannot be the be-all and end-all of an ecopoem.”
     - John Shoptaw 


Beelzebufo

Getaway car. Nothing’s 
on par with a max speed frog.

Bound around like a kangaroo
and take that swim!

Your “slashing” tongues injure.
Your “stabbing” tongue gathers. 

(No, you cannot execute
a tongue attack and swim.)

Mind well your tongue(s). Wait
for bugs to swarm the corpse.

Then lick up the paste.
(These frogs kill leeches too.).



Dimorphodon

Spelunking accessory?
Nothing’s more versatile…

(For what it’s worth, I’ve yet 
to test-drive vultures.)

… and hitched to a spyglass,
your flock is lethal…

(A primitive, yet 
unanticipated, sniper.)

… and you won’t need many 
if you’ve bred them well…

… and they’re somewhat 
semi-disposable.



Diplocaulus

Buy your living diving gear  —
your poor man’s scuba suit,

your floppy, weird and slimy 
tank and flippers all-in-one.

Long ago, they say, it tried 
to swallow a boomerang — 

and succeeded. Now 
it looks like the cousin

of some alien from Pitch Black. 
It’s every gator’s favourite snack. 

Even so, take that plunge. 
Get in way over your head.



Kaprosuchus

Our utility is exceptionally handy
with trilobites. 100% responsive 

on land and fast in the water. 
Snag a trilobite and pivot it 

in a circle, clamping the erstwhile 
crustacean in its jaws until it dies. 

No more chasing those trilobites
up and down the beach! 

You need them live? It not only 
snares your chattels for you, 

it packs them and ships them off,
straight to your paying clientele. 



Megalania

Down where spiders can’t climb walls
but lazy fat-arsed lizards can… 

What’s hitting the folks hard? What’s
forcing homesteaders on rotting flesh?

It’s Spiderman’s feral komodo beasts
slapping it out on your front porch.

It’s the females screwing themselves,
their eggs dripping down your walls.

It’s those vector-for-80-seconds-worth-
of-megarabies gnashing salivaed teeth.

It’s to indulge in rapacious assignations 
with wasted wannabe Aussie dragons.
 


Pteranodon

Each egg demands its own
peculiar temperature range.

Place your egg. Watch over
it’s health and incubation. 

It will let you know if it’s
feeling too hot or too cold.

Dote over the fires, torches, 
AC units, and dimetrodons. 

If the temperature is slightly 
off, egg health will decline... 

Oh, just take a bolas and lob
a full-grown ptera from the sky.



Quetzalcoatlus

The party platformer is finally here! 
(And the mohawk it flaunts is lush.) 

Deck it out with chairs, tables, snacks
and more. Your massive, flying 

ground sloth’s an unsurpassed, airborne 
A RV. So kit it out at the nearest rest stop 

and you’ll see what weary customers 
are willing to pay. But if there’s no fun 

or profit in bed-letting (if breeding’s 
taking up too much of your time),

then batten down the turrets. Pack it
full with C-4-loaded dodo torpedoes.



Sarcosuchus

Have your monkey fling 
shit at it 

to slow it down, 
then lure 

your quarry 
into the shallows —

It’s the singular 
seahorse 

from whose spine 
you’d proudly lift 

a spyglass 
to your eye.



Tapejara

It’s your dependable, trusty old school
bus, faithfully wrapped around a tree.

It’s your attack helicopter, zigging it up,
down, forward, backward, and side to side.

It’s your getaway car, packing 3 thugs, 
guns in hand, all blasting out the back.

It’s your general utility vehicle, your
harpoon launcher, your perfect recon,

your ultimate spy and surveillance drone. 
(But do take care around rocket launchers.)

It’s every backseat driver’s dream, and 
parking it’s a littoral walk in the park. 



Thorny Dragon

You should try to think of it
as the desert’s packrat. 

Grab a chain and make 
1 such devil your mini-mule. 

What’s the scorched Earth’s 
best asset? It’s this moloch’s

ranged quill attack. (K-Os 
a jerboa in 1 reflex action.) 

Try to imagine — a packrat 
once found true love

in a bearded dragon, and they
had a very beautiful child.



Titanoboa

You hear heavy slithering? 
Don’t run. Turn around, walk 

backwards. Poke it in the eyes 
over and over. Or jog a step, 

turn, and fire. Repeat. Take 
brisk, measured steps. You’ll 

kill it in the end. And come 
Halloween, it’ll be tameable 

for a time. Then it’s sure 
to serve up a few good laughs 

at the party. Pretty quiet. It’ll 
take the guests by surprise.




8 SNAPSHOTS FROM THE ARK (DEAD BUGS)

Achatina

So let me show you how to bake the cake. 
Steady a cooking pot. Boil the fibre, stimulant 

(pick berries), sparkpowder (grind flint 
and stone), carrots, some corn, and a potato. 

(It’s a vegetable cake.) For each crop, rig
a planter box (in a steel-frame greenhouse) 

enriched by irrigation and a compost bin. 
The last ingredient you’ll need is sap, tapped

from the giant redwoods. Be sure to fix the taps 
high above ground. (Erect tree platforms.) 

At last, you can bake your cake. Now feed it 
(this you must do by hand) to your snail.



Araneae

Overall, it’s just a stupidly 
designed creature. Anyone

who’s not on drugs will
never find this thing cute.

This thing should be able 
to climb walls and ceilings.

This thing should be able
to paraglide on gossamer.

This thing should be able
to take on bubbles of air 

and dive underwater, like
a big brown hairy fanged fish.



Arthropleura

You’ve found your living metaphor
for the xenomorph. The embodiment 

of the fully militant mount, 
the pure combat beast,

pimping low pH spittable blood 
and exclusive hazard gear. 

Hypersensitive to bug repellent,
and weak to ranged attacks, so

yeah, it’s gonna die — But run 
with it. BAM! (No C-4 needed.) 



Dung Beetle

Seal the circle of lystrosaurs. Feed 
the beetle. Pet them. Feed it again.

Bring 6 close friends (must be 6) to slaughter 
every live body in the beetle’s cave.

Invoke each snake, each scorpion, each bat. 
Then banish all relics and artefacts. 

Erect a greenhouse canopy. Shut the door.
Pace the circle round and round its orb

of dung until it grows deeply bored.
Now lie prone and crawl to it slowly. 

Make sure to hold fast to the ground. Then
let it kill you — let your shit flow free.
 


Firefly

Coax forth its electric charge
like you’re drawing water 

from a well. Once within 
its modest ambit, 

it’ll trigger its “spaz” mode. 
So approach it 

humbly, your battery 
in hand. (I received 

a red one’s pink light 
as a Valentine.) 

Photosensitive epilepsy?
When you see one — run.



Lymantria

Boomerangs 
are customarily 

considered 
a poor choice 

for knocking out
a butterfly.

No matter it’s
an ingenious

superbioweapon 
unleashing limitless

Nazi-grade
organoarsenic. 



Meganeura

BUITRECITO — 
Eat organic,

and it will 
come to you,

but if you
approach it 

with a dead 
body in tow, 

it will attack.  
So, kill it 

only by frog (or by torch?)
or it’ll aggro.



Titanomyrma

Always in the long grass 
where you can’t see them, 

always in that one place 
you least expect them,

they’re everywhere you go... 
and the swarm will follow you,

chasing you down, past herds 
and herds of dinos, further 

than any other creature 
will ever pursue you. 

You’re naked in the forest,
knowing only how to craft an axe.

David Jalajel is the author of Moon Ghazals (Beard of Bees Press, 2009), Cthulhu on Lesbos (Ahadada Books, 2011), a chapbook in Dan Waber’s This is Visual Poetry series (2013) and Rhyme & Refrain (University of the Western Cape, 2017). His work has appeared in a number of online and print journals, including Otoliths, Shampoo, experiential-experimental-literature, Recursive Angel, The New Post-Literate, Gulf Coast, Anti-, Lynx, Mizna, and Eclectica.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page