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The Poet’s Mother at Eleven, Killing a Chicken Lyrics by Chris Santiago

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As for the bird, its pedigree
was impeccable: rose-combed & indigenous
cockfighting in its blood. My grandfather had folded
its ancestor under his arm
in a bolt of jute & the boxcar dark. He was young & bound
for the Provinces, fleeing
with his bride the rifled capital, the Arisaka Type 99,
its stock chrysanthemum-stamped, its blade
jabbed half-jokingly into my grandmother’s
stomach—swollen the private thought
not with limbs but a stash: dowry. Doubloons.
Maybe even meat. In the clatter & sway
the hen held its tongue, producing
eggs but no epiphanies
though the flesh of its forebears had delighted
the palettes of missionaries, good-
intentioned Baptists in the wake of cholera
& reconcentration: nationbuilders.
Tenderfoots. Virgins still wet with
honeysuckle & whitewash
who brought among other things Home
Economics, so that fifty years
later my mother would have to corner
& seize it. Wring its wattled links.
Pluck it & gut it & waste nothing. Fold the bloodline
into hers.
Credits
Chris Santiago

Chris Santiago

About “The Poet’s Mother at Eleven, Killing a Chicken” by Chris Santiago

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