Portage Press’s spring reading period is now open! We are looking for full-length poetry manuscripts. Check out the Portage Press page for more.
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Check out great content by amazing authors and artists in our 2018 edition of Portage Magazine below!
In honor of the 2018 issue of Portage Magazine going live, we are pleased to announce that the winner of Portage Magazine’s very first “100 Words About Dinosaurs” contest is Noah Johnson. Noah gifted us with not one, but two lovely entries that critically evaluated the prizes and perils of prehistoric evolution at a level of depth we had never seen before, which you can read below. Thank you, Noah, for your contribution to dinosaurs everywhere.
As the world and its conditions shifted and changed, so, too, did the mighty beasts that inhabited it. Some of these creatures adapted unique survival mechanisms, like an armored face, or three swords mounted on their face, or a face that can retract back into their armored body. A lot of face stuff, if I’m being honest. Other, less evolutionarily creative species just grew to “megafauna” proportions. Imagine a sloth the size of a school bus and you’ll start to get the idea. My point is, evolution used to be cool, but now, all I have are these boring thumbs.
People don’t normally think of crocodiles as dinosaurs, but truth be told, they haven’t changed much since the time of dinos. Sure, they’ve gotten smaller, and they don’t have as much of their cool skin armor as they once did, but they are still one of nature’s most terrifying predators. They’ve been hiding in the swamps of the earth, gradually refining their survival niche. All these millennia and the crocodile has seen the death of countless species, in slow moves or great leaps into the grave. No wonder they’re so ornery, they’ve watched all their friends die for thousands of years.
