Category Archives: poetry

by Kiki Adams Spring enablesthe release of the chickens into rivers of grasswhich bubble up in crashing waves,swallowing rocks and ridgesinto their soft depths. The chickens wade, hiking their feetup high into their skirts to make their wayfrom island to island, searching for wormswho swim among the flowerbeds. The hens congregate in clusterson the shoresContinue reading “The Release of the Chickens”

by Jamie Manias They peck their dull beaks into the mudrhythmically, complex metronomes, and sometimesthey pump their tiny wings hardto lift their plump ruffled bodies towards heaven(for a moment) and flap harder stillas they fall, tiny Icari, every one.They do everything together. When oneraises her tail and her bony pinheadto dash across the mud, theContinue reading “Elegy for Nugget”

by Niko Hebron Sit beneath the shaded pinewith its neck twined betweenyour index and thumb, crossedand promised. This rooster fought: your hands bleeding, your face alsobleeding. The bird, blood-fulland pristine. It didn’t take muchfor you to really get a grip on it, using its own weight against thespine. The hens, already settledand grazing, know noContinue reading “Compost”

by Indigo The age-old questionof the chicken and the egg Tomatoes from the gardenJelly from the shed Chickens scratching through the yard which came firstthe cancer or the alcohol Soon there wereless and less chickensmore and more hospital trips When you have old parentsthat’s normal To think I once resentedthe golden roosterat the crack ofContinue reading “Less and Less Chickens”

by Anna Phillips The specter calls me, yet instinct forces me forward.Each step an agony,The futility of my task does not sway me. Respite could be found, but thinly-veiled hostility seeps from those more alert. Fate is prolonged to prevent needless suffering. It comes for us all, a shadow in the wake of each individual’sContinue reading “Prey”

by K. R. Rose The sun will explodeone day. But hopefully nottomorrow, at least. Tomorrow, at least,the rooster will know first thing:If he lives, we wake. If he lives, we wake,collect another dozen,scatter grain, sip tea, scatter grain, sip tea,sit porch, watch flock—free-range birds.O, Rhode Island reds. O, Rhode Island reds:you’re just too peaceful forContinue reading “Does the rooster know?”

by Cassian Kugler We complex barnyard terrors and our country squire, brilliant chauvinistic in a ruffle of emerald spruce and farmer tans colors. Puffyfluff and all, a ruffled bunch of squawking. An inconsiderate few, always underfoot, razor beak primed for the pecking of bare-ankle flesh. That tamarind shine of both beak and foot, a distantContinue reading “Evolution”

by Debdutta Pal Go play with the chickens.I knew that tone, I knew when to conserve my battery.A week on a farm wasn’t going to tilt the city girl in me,I liked wide open skies,fields greener than two crayons, and the static of Television just fine,but even at eight, I knew it wasn’t mine. IContinue reading “Bird or Broccoli?”

by Maylea Harris my rooster who crows at sundownis nothing more than wasted meathe keeps the farmers awake, my pigs restlessmy hens begging him to come nest but he screams at the end of the workdaylike someone is acknowledging him(if we do, he’d never stop)I’ll do the same at my time, but it’s still annoyingContinue reading “my broken rooster”

by James Joy A scientist will tell youevolution proves the egg came firstcracked from a creaturenot yet a chicken as we see. An Indian might tell youlife as a force began from a sacred eggthat roseout of the primordial ocean.Shell splitting into sky and earth. An Egyptian myth tells the story of the first egg,laidContinue reading “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”