{"id":1519,"date":"2021-04-18T10:23:06","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T18:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/?p=1519"},"modified":"2021-04-18T10:26:32","modified_gmt":"2021-04-18T18:26:32","slug":"reporting-on-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/?p=1519","title":{"rendered":"Reporting on Chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<pre class=\"wp-block-verse\">Kayla and I sit out of sight where the hall turns,\na short leg to the exit, with a window to view&nbsp;\nthe outside. Outside where snow trembles\n\non the lip of a small rivulet and sun catches\nrandom rings of light. She chose chickens\nfor her topic, <em>because I have them<\/em>, she says.\n\nShe fans the pages of notebook, looking\nfor where she ended while I think about Ryan\nwho chose sharks, who\u2019s never seen a shark,\n\nbut wears a tooth on a string around his neck,\ntells me a great white can find me in the water\nby the electricity I give off, then bite my skull open\n\nand eat my brains. Chickens, on the other hand,\nhave short legs and a heavy body. Males with\nbrightly colored feathers are roosters and then\n\nthere\u2019s the comb on their head, a flap of extra skin.\nKayla knows all this. She tells me about a rooster\nthey had once who turned ugly, chased her and her sister\n\nup the drive, pecking their legs, until they arrived home\nbitten and bloody. Her father said he\u2019d had enough\ngot his gun, went out, shot the chicken dead,\n\nfrom the loss&nbsp; in Kayla\u2019s voice I picture\nthe flesh tremble, the eyes glaze, the words&nbsp;\nbarbed wires. I watch her shoulders\n\npull in as she sits beside me. The smell\nof bread drifts from the cafeteria.&nbsp;\nShe picks up her pencil,&nbsp; erases whole paragraphs&nbsp;\n\n\nuntil I stay her hand. <em>Chickens<\/em>, she writes,&nbsp;\nand then stops. My own probing only more misdirection&nbsp;\nas she grasps at facts. <em>They are not always white.&nbsp;<\/em>\n\n<em>Sometimes a rooster will peck you and there is blood.&nbsp;<\/em>\n<em>Sometimes they eat what you give them and that is still&nbsp;<\/em>\n<em>not enough. Hens lay eggs and you eat them.<\/em>\n\n\n\n\nTar River Review\nFall 2017\n\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kayla and I sit out of sight where the hall turns, a short leg to the exit, with a window to view&nbsp; 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 &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/?p=1519\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Reporting on Chickens&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1519"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1519\/revisions\/1522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/judykaber.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}