By: Naomi Fountain

From across the barnyard they saw each other

He brash and boastful

his streaming feathers dark and mysterious

shimmering with green iridescence

each time he stamped his mighty, clawed foot

She calmly elegant

and pristinely pale

with a dignified air

belied only by the feisty tilt of her beak

With a proud prance he approached

as she coyly pecked

gamely dodging

averting her eyes

with swift, short turns of her head

Was she parrying?

Or tarrying?

Rebuffing?

Or re-beckoning?

Still he approached

Until there could be no denying

he was there but for her alone

she turned by half

toward him

and he toward her

and their eyes, electric with love and longing

and closer they approached

until they could smell the dried corn on each other’s breath

and then closer still

and closer

until

But alas

chickens have

no lips

with which

to kiss

By: Gerundo

Where is my mind

Where is my mind

I can't see you. It's dark

Nor can I hear you. It's silent

Can you hear me?

Boock! Dang.

Be still

Here I am!

I am here

Am I here? 

[Editor's note: Mike was a real chicken who lived for 18 months without a head, touring as a sideshow. The spirit of Mike  is now celebrated in an annual festival in Fruita, CO.]

By: Jim Kudrik

Golden feathers on the golden sand

Golden beak toward a distant land

No barnyard here, no eggs to lay

No farmer standing in my way

Just roaring surf and endless sky

And burrowing crabs to catch my eye

Today I sing a song of me

For I am chicken

of the sea

By: Dr. Deano

I had a chicken poem once

back when I was a young buck

I was eager as an otter to read it on stage

and waited impatiently for my day to come

But when it was time to shine

I stared at the crowd like a deer in headlights

I got a frog in my throat

Butterflies in my stomach

And my knees started buckling 

like a newborn giraffe

I ran like a dog offstage to the nearest bar

and drank like a fish

That chicken poem has been like a bat in the attic ever since

By: James John Kupenpott

Stippled comb upon my head

Sharpened spur above my heel

Rounded breast yet full of dread

I tell myself I must not feel

My feathers brown

My eyeball round

Though fair I be, my thoughts are fowl

Whilst on the wind I hear a howl

Tonight I lay among my hens

Pigs asleep deep in their pens

But long before the light of dawn

I will do as I have sworn

And wake

And crow

And reign my wrath upon my foe

By: Jim Kudrik

While the world sleeps

a feeling

from deep within

awakens

Is it restlessness?

Or is it malevolence?

Does he get up each pre-dawn

deviously determined to disturb?

Or does he simply rise

and without any self-awareness

simply crow

like the mindless coelurosaurian that he is?

Maybe each day is new

with no recollection of the previous

and he just wakes

and for whatever reason

it happens to be that day

Fear

or loneliness

or a misguided sense of duty

He crows

But no

Scientists have studied it

Put roosters in dark rooms

And listened for their crowing

And sure enough

like clockwork

At two hours before dawn

They crowed

Because roosters always crow

And so they listened closer

And closer still

And they pondered and puzzled

And finally they decided

they knew what it meant

Loudly and proudly

(rooster-like themselves)

they proclaimed

their translation:

I am rooster

Here I am

Dare you

challenge me?

By: Margaret Hatcher

Thank you, little chubby hen

For the daily egg you lay and then

On the morrow lay again

For each and every grateful day

That egg you let me take away

To eat, perhaps with ham

Like the foxy beast I am

Your softly huggable fluffy down

Quietly gold and speckled brown

Yet beautifully bold as a ballroom gown

The gifts you give and keep on giving

Your constant pecking, your simple living

Inspire me to be more like you

Selflessly lending humility to

All you are and all you do

By: Johnathan James

Cluck cluck what pluck

To escape a fox takes more than luck

It takes a constant, watchful fear

To signal when the threat is near

Half a moment is all we need

To gather strength and summon speed

To evade our foe in a frenzied parry

And not to dilly, dally, or tarry

And with a blast of feathers and gutteral coos

We will win and they will lose

So call us “chicken” not in jest

But praising that which we do best

By: Henrietta LePlume

Once there lived a hen

Who never left her pen

Instead, she sat and quietly brooded

Completely still and silently rooted

Day after day

she stayed that way

Whether beneath her breast were eggs

Or just her scrawny chicken legs

The other hens gave her a name

Because every day she looked the same

Like a turtle, her back all rounded

Thus the name was not unfounded

And the way she seemed to hide

Tucking her head down deep inside

And then one day a hardened shell

Formed in a shape much like a bell

Her skin transformed from naturally feathery

To strangely green and thickly leathery

And beneath the shell what once was there

Was soon as vaporous as the air

The hens were puzzled—they didn’t know

That on a bird a shell could grow

But alas, it can, and often does

On them as well as on some of us

From seeds once sown of hate or love

Or a cowardly lack thereof

Or words we maybe do not say

For those solemn silences that lead astray

For some, don’t ever go away

A shell like that on a turtle’s back

On its own will never crack

To take it off takes more of you

Than a “cock-a-doodle-doo”

You must peck and peck and peck away

With loving pecks each livelong day

For only when foul ways are broken

Can sleeping souls again be woken