You can watch a video of a performance of this poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94rB9NgNuiU

This poem was featured in the Brackish: Backwoods Kinship Zine.

When a Meat Hen is Ready for Slaughter

They can barely walk

Much less fly. But watch them try

Their wings remember their foremothers

Flight

They are Bred for consumption. This is something we share.

There is more

Stocky legs, powerful, but never strong enough

To carry all that weight

Our inheritance.

We are built like the

Women in my family.

All thighs and breasts

Bred to provide

A good meal.

Fat and fleshy, we grow up too fast

For biology

or evolution

To keep pace.

Yet, our too big hearts

Will never let go

Of our love of lying in the grass

In the sun,

Of digging in the earth,

Of eating.

Of fucking.

Of crowing and

clucking.

—————-

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