by Portia Yu
Consider the egg:
it has no artifice
it cannot make up for its lack of feathers
so it forms a layer of hard denial
a shell of strict identity
floating in its centre, the yolk sits like an eye held steady
in this way
the egg perceives itself
Consider the chicken:
all noise and movement
every squawk is matched with a flutter
every flap of the wing is memorised in sound
the chicken has its tail in the past and its beak in the future
from the moment it is born, it never stops moving
the chicken can only perceive
what is not itself
And this is my belief:
there are some questions that have no answers.
Portia Yu’s poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Frontier Poetry, streetcake magazine and other places. Her micro-chapbook “Alternative Bus Routes in a City Long Gone” is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. Sometimes, she believes eggs are the most perfectly formed objects to have ever been produced by nature.