Jeanette L. Miller

AS I TAKE IN GOULDTHORPE'S (wild) DUCK MY MIND'S EYE SEGUES TO (domestic) CHICKENS AND, IN RESPONSE TO HIS NARRATIVE IMAGES, I WRITE MY FIRST NARRATIVE POEM

I watched Grandpa Peterseim carry wooden crates

from his pick-up to the back yard.

The heads of old, white-feathered chickens

protruded through the slats of the crates,

reminding me of moose and deer heads mounted

on wood plaques hanging on the wall of the garden shed,

a small storage room

where G’pa kept the lawn mower, garden tools,

guns, tents, and fishing poles.  A gunny sack

held two dozen wooden ducks painted to look real.

One by one, Grandma took a hen, by its legs, from the crate

and placed its head on a wood block near the trash burner,

its contents in continuous flame.

She stretched the hen’s neck, a coil under feathers.

Alive, it appeared frozen on the block,

not knowing it could run away. 

Grandma chopped off its head with a red-handled axe

and threw it into the fire.

Headless, one hen’s body ran as far as it could,

parallel to the clothesline, then slowed down

like a wind-up toy that needs to have its key

turned again.  Sometimes G’ma didn’t use the axe.

She held the bird at arm’s length,

twirled it round and round in one direction

until the bird hung lifeless in her hand.

If she’d let go, the chicken could have soared  --

a feathered kite  --  over the walnut tree, the strawberry patch,

and over the lightning rod , a metal rooster standing on top

of arrows marking directions

on the roof of Grandma & Grandpa’s house.