What We Did with the ChickensAuthor(s): Carol PotterSource: The Iowa Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter, 1989), pp. 23-25Published by: University of IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20152806 .

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in some brand new country, the way the sky stayed lit

all night long and you lying beside me. The next morning I told you about driving the chickens to the upper

pasture and we both laughed because at that moment

it looked easy. I didn't tell you I couldn't sleep,

didn't tell you about the woman crying or the car

idling three stories down or the rain falling all night. When you think of me, I want you to see me

sitting tall on the back of a tremendous, dark horse ?

how easy I ride that horse

while my brothers and I, laughing,

herd 200 chickens into the upper pasture. I want you to look up and see the white chickens

clucking through an acre of green ?

400 white wings glinting in sunlight. The chickens, dignified. The children, beautiful.

What We Did with the Chickens

After eating Moo Goo Gai Pan at a table with two women

we had never seen before, having heard about one woman's

heart condition and her husband's difficulty with his neck, how it bent one way but not the other, then the other

woman

told of the dress she bought for her niece's wedding and why they didn't

go skiing last winter, my daughter and I went out on the street

and stood staring into the window of a Chinese grocery.

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There was a bin of pickled chicken feet as if the birds had bit themselves at the leg where some trap held, then

hoisted themselves out of Chinatown where we stood

wondering how one could eat those feet

or the stripped gut of fish laid out in the bin next to the feet. It would have been amazing to have seen that flock fly

up over Boston with their white wings and legs with no feet, bare stubs

dangling down; awkward as chickens are

in the air, inept with their wings even though they can run down roads

with no heads at the tops of their necks

delighting small children

and the boy with the ax.

The boy with the ax was my brother.

We had a barn full of chickens. I thought it was all those eggs forming inside their bodies

kept them clumsy in air, the way they flapped so hard when we chased them; fat like they had another world

lodged inside their bellies, a second kingdom

coming.

Clucking, their yellow beaks

clicked all day long. That sound rolled

through our sleep like water running as if someone

was informing us, whispering in our ears, "This is it,

this is it."

I thought the sound itself might one day be enough to inflate the barn like a balloon, lifting the barn and 200 birds straight up into the sky and there would be no more

birds pecking at our feet, no more

standing in the cellar sorting eggs, cleaning

specks of shit off shells. One night after a storm, there was a sound

in the trees made me think the barn

was shifting on its joints.

I thought I could hear 400 wings opening wide in the dark.

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Sitting up, I could see each one of us

suddenly free, delivered like it was possible to swallow so much air the body could float

out of any conversation ?

straight up from the spot, see you later ?

we'll talk about it ?

good-bye.

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