there’s no mcdonald’s on the world’s largest submarine plateau
if there is one thing the
history of evolution has
taught us, it’s that life
will not be contained.
— dr. ian malcolm
in the wake of mass extinction, the birds kept living. meandered among the tidal flats and gullies of the most remote islands. waimanu and kupoupou stilwelli, these proto penguins, water birds, diving birds, gathering tufts of coastal tussock, mosses, lichens to line the nests they scraped into basalt rock. in church, the pastor said there are no dinosaurs in the bible, so they can’t be real, can’t ever have been real. what then of the penguins, the man who gave names, and every living thing of all flesh? if gopher wood can be cypress, then behemoth can be sauropod. scientists say there are no dinosaur fossils on the heard and mcdonald islands, but who can explain the hollow salt-sprayed gentoo bones, the sun-bleached vertebral column of the eastern rockhopper? on a wednesday, the president wakes and declares a reciprocal tariff of 10 percent on the islands, and we wonder how it’ll play out, these volcanic formations where there are neither humans nor happy meals. just waddles and rafts of penguins, on rocky beaches, in lagoon complexes. let him try and levy a tax on their spiny tongues, their hooked claws, their curved beaks, their powerful jaws. after all, life finds a way.
Natalye Childress
Natalye Childress (she/her) is a Berlin-based editor, writer, translator, and sad punk. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears or is forthcoming in Querencia Press, Frozen Sea, JAKE, wildness, Anthropocene, and elsewhere. She has an MA in creative writing, and her first book, The Aftermath of Forever, was published by Microcosm Publishing.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
A BRAWLER UPGRADE!!!! Loveeee seeing friendly faces in my inbox and love even more when someone WRITES A POEM JUST FOR ME?!!! Oh my gosh how could I say no? Actually, I could have BUT the poem is awesome so I didn’t!
But seriously. This poem is snarky in every way it counts, and a gut punch in more ways than one. I love how nature enters this poem, weaved with the political and pop culture. It's holding a lot of different threads which I think the prose form really helps with. The opening line, mirrored in the closing line is also a powerful reminder that the earth was here before humans, and will be here long after. Birds too.
Just look at how much is packed in that block. Such lush and dense language (just like a Jurassic rainforest). Paired with a perfect quote from Ian Malcolm (swoooooon) and this poem is set. I mean truly, what more could I ask for? I feel like my love for this one goes beyond craft and close-reading and just sits in the heart of my enjoyment. I love this poem. It makes me so happy.
And congrats to Natalye on being (I think?) the first repeat Brawler on Team Taylor. I’m building such a solid roster y’all.
Interview:
So normally I ask people "why Team Taylor" but you're already on Team Taylor, so this is more like a character upgrade right? Tell me (or I guess readers) about why you wrote this poem? And why you wanted to submit to me again?
Earlier this year, you published a poem by Gavin Garza (https://www.brawllit.com/2025/gavin-garza) that takes place in a McDonald’s, and you noted you were looking for another McDonald's poem to "even the score" with Martheaus. And, well, I love a challenge, and lately I've been into responding to informal calls/wishes of editors, so I started writing something to see if it would go anywhere. I didn't know at the beginning what it would turn out to be like, but earlier that week, Trump had made headlines for imposing tariffs on the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which is notable for its penguin population and its complete lack of humans, so that association with McDonald’s was fresh in my mind, and it kind of spiraled from there. An hour or two later, I had a poem.
As for why I wanted to submit to you, not only did I think it would be fun to get a friendly competition going (who will get the next McDonald's poem?), but I was also deep in the thick of reading your book (https://elj-editions.com/bone-valley-hymnal/) and so dinosaurs were on the brain even more than they usually are. And penguins = birds = dinosaurs, so I just kind of went with it. And as you said in my acceptance, this poem was so very clearly written for you, and I packed in so many Easter eggs specifically for you that it had to be Team Taylor.
When you think about poetry and the political, how do you navigate the weaving of those two things?
I don't think I ever set out to write "political" poems, and a lot of the time, my poems are about relationships of some kind. But now that you've asked this, when I look back on my body of work, it isn't a stretch to say that a lot of what I write is political. That said, I don't think I ever go into writing a poem focusing on that aspect; rather it comes out because of the themes I so often write about, abolition and religion both being recurring ones. On a more general level, the act of writing any kind of poem is at its core political, because writing poetry is an anti-capitalist act. I'd venture to say most of us don't do it to make money; we do it because we love writing.
Interestingly enough, I let my husband read this poem when I'd finished it and his reaction was that I sounded really angry! And I found that interesting, because I guess I do get a little aggressive there in the end, but to me, it mostly just felt funny — as in, the whole scenario, yes, but also the idea that these penguin are really dinosaurs, and how I'd love you-know-who to meet a fate similar to Donald Gennaro in Jurassic Park, but only from like, a macaroni penguin instead of T-rex. I mean, just imagine.
Why prose?
As I've been finding and refining my voice, I feel like prose feels most natural to me because it allows me to write without thinking about form. I really struggle with writing lineated poetry most of the time, because I second guess every line break or overthink what kind of emphasis I want where. And I'm a nostalgic person and a perfectionist, so I feel like every decision I make on where words go has to have a reason and a meaning and a pattern. With prose, I'm able to focus on the words and not be distracted by the form, and especially for a poem like this, it helps me connect ideas that feel disparate in a way that creates meaning for me or makes sense.