Cover — Teeth by Hen
Threshold by Grace Brooks
Blood Moon Hen by Brittany Redd
I keep trying to write a poem about roosters but write the chickens missing feathers on my family’s farm instead. by Olivia Mettler
Alice in Bruges by Rachel Turney
Farm to Table by imarkanx
A Case of Fowl Play by Simon Kaeppeli
Spooky Party – Chickens Only! by ghostlymatte
What Have You Done by Blake Foster-Wagamon
Josie-the-Menace by Loréna Bur
Not–so-secret Ingredient by B.C. Byron
Viens Ici by Raymond Brunell
Poultrygeist by Cinnamon Shakes
The Rooster That Screams by Laura Shell
Graveyard by Makenna
To Swallow a Rooster Whole by Nikolaj Volgushev
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Print double-sided, flipping pages on the short edge. After printing, fold in half and staple on the spine. Zines are sized to 8.5″ x 11″ paper.
Editor’s Note
by alliyah
Somewhere against the pitch black sky of night, a rooster screams, and the moon rises… This zine edition is a little different than our usual COOP vibe, in fact you might even call it downright SPOOKY! Typically each COOP zine has a few entries that lean towards the dark side of chickens and since it seems to be part of the recurring personality of chicken creations, we decided to lean into it for this edition! If you can find your way through the darkness by the light of the moon, you’re going to find haunted farms, chilling chicken fights, and eerie meals all to the tune of a rooster screaming into the void. There might be parts that make you cringe or feel like looking away, but isn’t that part of the beauty of literature and art? It makes us feel something together in a way that can’t be denied. May this zine be for you a trick and a treat!
Thank you for all of our contributors who made this zine possible!
Editor’s Note
by Rook
One of the epigraphs of Robert Southey’s epic The Curse of Kehama reads: “Curses are like young chicken, they always come home to roost.” At COOP, we think curses are also like chickens because they’re perfectly fitting for the Halloween season.
There is an inherently creepy or haunted quality to chickens. Sometimes it seems as if their beady eyes stare deeply into some unknowable plane of existence. On the other hand, to some, they’re no more than a source of meat. While unfortunate, this perspective makes these birds an excellent vehicle for musings on mortality and death. Chickens can be scary: anyone who has kept them knows their occasional viciousness. From the perspective of a bug, they are monstrous. In all, they are an excellent muse for spooky art and writing!
We love showcasing the many different perspectives on chickens in our regular issues, but sometimes it’s fun to examine them from a narrower angle. We received so many pieces where chickens were viewed from a perspective of horror that we thought a special Halloween issue was in order.
There really is something amazing about seeing such a specific theme emerge in the many submissions we receive and then getting to create a special issue just to highlight it. Thank you to all our contributors who were somehow sharing a wavelength with each other. Special thanks to the artists I solicited (sometimes rather last-minute) for their perfectly fitting pieces.