As I enter the chicken house
And feel my way through the
darkness
With my bare feet
The barn kept purposefully dark
Like father keeps my bedroom, even
in daytime
Especially in daytime
In the chicken house
The pre-dawn light weakly assembles
Through cracks in the walls
And the dilapidated aluminum roof
Affords me vague notions of shape
and depth
I brace myself ahead of the pain
But still wince
As quills of loose feathers stab
at my feet
Hard corn bites at my heels
And sharp daggers of stench stab
at my nose
I press on, searching
The chickens part for me, a sea of
dirty feathers
As I wait for at least one
That doesn’t
Soon, a rubbery, yielding, downy
softness
Meets my spread toes
As my eyes adjust, I see
A cautious circumference
Maintained by other curious chickens
Around its latest, seed-choked
dead
Above the carcass, barely
perceptible in the early dawn
Flies are desperately trying to lace-up
the air
As if trying to contain and keep
forever
This fresh burst of emanating
death
I stoop and grab the dead bird
By its ropey neck
And with my tongue firmly
anchored
To the side of my mouth
I grip it tighter—and launch it
The bird flies up from my pin-wheeled
arm
Up, up, up
The entire coop, with ratchet-like
precision
Stares up, with celestial awe,
toward the floating, ascending bird
And as before, the brood issues
in perfect concord
A reverent, "OOOOOOOOOOOOO"
As the dead bird rises toward the
rafters
And slows, stops, and hangs there
for a moment
At the very apex of its ascent
The inert wings seem about to
shoulder out of death’s grip
Stretch out on their own
And achieve flight
The chickens are silent as they watch
and wait
With fear, dread, or perhaps some
with glee
As the form falls again
For me, each delicious moment of silence
During this descent
Is what my soul gulps up greedily
This is the opulent nothingness I
would later draw from
When father is again over me
And I yearn for similar such oblivion
The chickens hop back
Enlarging the circle, me at its
center
The pistil of some gruesome
twilight flower
As the dead bird hits the ground
with a muffled boom
A quiet whistle is the first to
fill the silence
The mechanical sigh of its
deflated lungs
The cackling of the chickens
returns with a vengeance
As I trace my way back outside,
toward the house
Their mocking laughter follows me
It sneaks up my calves, my thighs
And inches toward my abdomen
(Where I keep hidden that stolen
silence)
Advancing with the sickly twitch
Of unwanted conception
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