Nina Galen
CROC – Love and Power Politics in Swamptown, YO
, a political satire, is the story of two deeply-in-love, star-crossed crocodiles who run for the same U.S. Senate seat on opposite tickets. Crocadolly, a Demodile, runs on an ecology platform. Young Rockadial, innocent stooge of greedy old Crockafeller, runs against big government and Federal taxation, as a Repelican.
Not for the faint of heart, this extremely funny yarn can turn deadly and tragic as suddenly as a crocodile striking its prey
KROH – The Greening of a Small Planet This satire on the global economy concerns a diverse group of nineteen Earthlings (including an Economist, a Navajo, two Politicians, a Rabbi, a Psychiatrist, a Duck, and two Crocodiles) that travels to the planet Kroh to see if it is ripe for trade with Earth.
Some in the Delegation bring along schemes that will help them profit personally, without regard for the planet’s inhabitants and ecology. Others are on quests of self-discovery. The Krohtians, teddy-bearish creatures with the minds of men, are happy to see the visitors come, and glad to see them go.
All author’s royalties will go to protect and increase wildlife habitats.
Crocodile drawing by David Levine.
Nina Galen
has published novels and articles in the U.S., England and France. The novellas
CROC and
KROH are her first written in ‘heroic or epic doggerel’.
Galen’s novels include The Rennläufer: E.P. Dutton; Victor Gollancz (England); Editions Planète (France) The Grapevine: Victor Gollancz; Sphere (England) Monopoly on Terror (pen name Bruce Buck): Zebra Books, and Eden Motel and To Love Flaminio: East Palace. She has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and in the scholarly journal, Nineteenth Century Fiction. Her aviation articles have appeared in Flying, Flying’s Guide to Instrument Flying, and Air Progress, as well as aviation magazines in England and France.
The author’s Commentaries and Features have been produced on Public Radio.
A Special Collection of Galen’s publications, manuscripts and personal papers can be found at the CSWR, General Library, University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. There is also a Special Collection of her publications at UCLA.
THE CELLAR
Below the grassy surface
Of a hillock,
In a dark and dankish
Crayfish cellar,
Stood a cage
With one bird in it.
Minute after boring minute,
Hour after day,
She watched the crayfish vats,
And wondered why fish looked
As odd as they,
And why they called them cray.
It comes from Middle French crevis
An elderly acquaintance
In the corner told her,
Though French is not
My field of expertise.
Then, getting bolder
He went on, but tell me why
You call yourself
An alligator bird,
A name I've never heard.
Replied the bird,
It's a question of poetic meter;
Alligator bird sounds neater
Than crocodile bird,
A/k/a African plover,
Which is what I really am,
My species no doubt
Smuggled over.
But that name, like the one
My mother gave me,
Is poetically unscannable.
And what name might that be?
She called me Annabel,
Annabel Lee, a bunch
Of syllables and stresses
Useless to an honest poet.
How well I know it,
Sighed the man,
And how often I've despaired
At having my name and addresses,
PhD and M.Sc.'s
Poetically impaired.
My name, you see, is
J. A. Prufrock,
And I'm a homeless
Ornithologist.
At this, the alligator bird,
Tipping one eye
Toward the corner, asked him
Was he sleeping there on gunny
'Cause he'd lost
His job and money?
Just so, said he,
As wing-ed species go extinct
There's less work
For the likes of me,
Whose specialty
Is birdies having vital signs.
When pulse and breathing go away
I find I've nothing more to say.
It's at such times
An honest ornithologist resigns.
The captive bird let out a sigh.
It's good to hear
That somewhere out there
Honesty's alive and kicking;
The evil croc
Who put me in this cage
Deserves a licking.
Dr. Prufrock could not
Believe his ears.
You say a croc is holding you?
A crocodile?
A beast that lives one hundred years,
That grows nine meters long,
And has a jaw so strong and big
That it can down a full-sized pig?
That's right, the bird replied,
That's Crockafeller to a T,
A croc as mean as mean can be,
And big as he is mean.
Then, panicked by a mortal dread
J. A. Prufrock said,
I-better-leave-before-I'm-seen.
But it already was too late
To latch onto a different fate;
In minutes he was found and drowned
And served up on a dinner plate.
And with his vital signs away
He found he had no more to say,
And though he wanted to resign
They washed him down
With Beaujolais.
