Kayla and I sit out of sight where the hall turns, a short leg to the exit, with a window to view the outside. Outside where snow trembles on the lip of a small rivulet and sun catches random rings of light. She chose chickens for her topic, because I have them, she says. She fans the pages of notebook, looking for where she ended while I think about Ryan who chose sharks, who’s never seen a shark, but wears a tooth on a string around his neck, tells me a great white can find me in the water by the electricity I give off, then bite my skull open and eat my brains. Chickens, on the other hand, have short legs and a heavy body. Males with brightly colored feathers are roosters and then there’s the comb on their head, a flap of extra skin. Kayla knows all this. She tells me about a rooster they had once who turned ugly, chased her and her sister up the drive, pecking their legs, until they arrived home bitten and bloody. Her father said he’d had enough got his gun, went out, shot the chicken dead, from the loss in Kayla’s voice I picture the flesh tremble, the eyes glaze, the words barbed wires. I watch her shoulders pull in as she sits beside me. The smell of bread drifts from the cafeteria. She picks up her pencil, erases whole paragraphs until I stay her hand. Chickens, she writes, and then stops. My own probing only more misdirection as she grasps at facts. They are not always white. Sometimes a rooster will peck you and there is blood. Sometimes they eat what you give them and that is still not enough. Hens lay eggs and you eat them. Tar River Review Fall 2017
Poems by Judy Kaber