Killing Chickens

Never mind what you think. The old man did not rush Recklessly into the coop the last minute. The chickens hardly stirred For the easy way he sang to them. Red sun is burning out Past slag heaps of the mill. The old man Touches the blade of his killing knife With his fat thumb. I’m in the backyard on a quilt Spread out under the heavy dark plums He cooks for his whiskey. He walks among the hens singing His chicken song way down in his throat Until he finds the one who’s ready And he holds her to his barrel chest. What did you think? Did you think you just jerk the bird From her roost and hack her head off? Beyond the coop I see the fleeting white dress of my grandmother As she crosses and recrosses the porch To fill the bucket with scalding water. How easy the feathers will come When she drowns them for plucking And clouds the air with a stench I can’t stand not to breathe. I’m not even a boy yet but I watch The old man sing out into the yard, His knife already at the chicken’s throat When everything begins to spin in my world— He slices off the head without a squawk, And swirls the bird in circles, a fine Blood spray fanning out far enough To reach me where I wait Obediently, where I can’t stop watching The head the old man picks up, His free hand becomes a puppet chicken Clucking at me, pecking my head with the cold beak Until I cry for him to stop, Until he pins me down, clucking, laughing, blood All over his hands. He did it so I would remember him I tell myself all these years later. He did it because it was his last summer Among us. In August he didn’t feel the fly Come into his cancerous ear and lay its eggs. He didn’t feel the maggots hatch As he sat dazed with pills in the sun. He pecked my head and laughed out of love, Out of love he snatched me roughly to his chest And sang his foreign songs way, Way down in his throat.