I actually always imagine the bird in An Evil Bird by Anna Sykora to be a raven. Alas, I haven’t any pictures of a raven, so I’m going to use this one of a magpie instead. I didn’t do the embroidery you see there, just took the photo of it.

But yes. An Evil Bird by Anna Sykora. I adored this poem from the first moment I read it. It’s really quite fun and the last stanza always makes me smile. It says something about Ms. Sykora’s versatility that she also wrote On Its Own which is a thought-provoking, somewhat melancholy poem which remains one of my personal favourites ever. Ever. Not just of poems we’ve published at Niteblade.

~*~

This post has been written as a part of the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. My theme this year is ‘Niteblade‘, which is the magazine I publish. I chose this theme to help draw attention to the magazine during this, it’s 2nd annual fundraiser.

My first post in this series was about choosing stories and poems to nominate for awards and I’ve gone through a similar process in deciding what to write about for these posts. Not only did I have to choose stories and poems I loved, but they also had to fit with the A-Z theme. Tricky!

Blogging from A to Z 2013:

A: Award Nominations
B: Brenda Stokes Barron
C: Cato, Beth – The Pacifier
D: December 2011 (Giveaway open until April 30th)
E: Evil Bird

ETA: People seem to be feeling bad for ravens because I said that’s how I imagine the bird in this poem. For the record I love ravens. Love them. I even have nine of them tattooed on my arm. Well, I call it a murder of crows, but crows, ravens… any corvidae has got my heart.