The Chicken / The Ax
Which came first, the chicken or the ax?
The chicken that yields eggs,
or the ax that kills chickens—
decapitates, mutilates and
otherwise violates weaponless chickens
of every description?
Leghoms, Reds and various pullets
headless and flopping like popcorn
for agonizing moments in the yard.
Or was it the ax—
fashioned from metals lassoed from the earth,
smelted and tempered and hammered and bent,
crafted and shaped to a double-edged wedge
and swung through the air like an
old, bloody grudge.
Which came first. The chicken? The Ax?
The living or the killing; creation or destruction?
To my 9-year-old mind the answer
was as simple as the limpid orange nectar
I sipped with such reverence as I watched
the flock pass in a murmur of cackles,
the jerking red combs like jagged, cut tongues,
proclaiming their awe at the
pile of severed noggins.
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Tin Can!
Oh tin can!
I see your shiny, corrugated sides...
Metal. Alloy.
Are you truly tin? I doubt it.
Are you a can? Well, clearly.
So I know you and don’t know you
and yet I give pause to wonder,
What is in you?
What lies so secret beneath your smooth,
uniformly unopened tin (?) lid?
Hateful drama! This unlabeled world.
I dare not anticipate, I must delve deeper.
Will it be chocolate frosting?
Could it be chili?
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