by Ariel Langen
Let there be pink chickens
May chicks come pecking and pushing from their shells
Down feathers pasted deep magenta to their skin from the egg-goo
Let red-rooster father and white-hen mother groom
Squealing newborn birds into fluffy, rosy dandelion fuzzes
Let there be pink chickens
Not only dyed pink by dragon fruit and pomegranate juice
But may their feathers simply grow freckled and dappled
In blushing tapestries of coral, bubblegum, watermelon
They will be Nature’s finest designs
When chickens become pink, because they surely will,
Let no hunter look upon those colors with hungry eyes
May every coyote, every snake, see cotton-candy feathers
And stay a moment for the pink glimmering quiet in the sunlight
Maybe they will take a stray plume, laying on the ground
And turn round, their hunger no longer an objective
To whoever made chickens, back when chickens were made,
If you are reading this message, please hear me now,
Let chickens be pink in all their flapping, squawking glory
Let the white-hen mother incubate a cherry colored egg
So pink chickens may run free and wild forever and evermore
Ariel Langen is a high school senior who discovered she has too much schoolwork on her mind, and not enough chickens. Growing up in an area of farmlands and farm-owning families, she has always wondered about how different life would be with a little coop in the backyard.