Before 2020 I hadn’t been acutely aware
Of the significance behind a man’s stare.
The mental plucking and pecking at my breasts and thighs
Like I am chicken who had just opened its eyes
To where her fellow hens were being led.
“There’s a reason they kept us so well fed”
I urge to anyone who would listen
But these words do not take hold, my eyes glisten,
And I wonder what they would think in another coop.
I wonder if they would quarrel with and swoop
Around the hand that seeks to harm with patency.
I decide they must exercise their agency
In other coops more than they do here.
But one downside to this revelation is that I often live in fear.
Some hens say they can’t relate—
They’re completely okay with letting the hand dominate.
Because there’s no reason to fear a hand you don’t examine,
Especially when that hand has historically kept us from famine.
This hand gave us food, water, and built our entire world
So we’re indebted to a hand that also pillages our kind, undeterred,
Right? Some hens seem to think so.
Why? To be honest, I don’t know.
I don’t know why some women deny how this hand treats them
And then wonder where their sons get such vicious traits from.
I don’t know how the hand doesn’t see what it’s doing
When the instances we interact often leave us in ruins.
I don’t know who can’t see in this expansive universe we call a farm
That the dynamic between this hand and the hens causes everyone harm.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to graze freely on this land
Without being forced back inside by my fear of the hand.
I don’t know what we did to deserve a punishment for existing
But I’m tired of some other hens being so unresisting.
And most importantly,
I don’t know where some of my fellow hens are.
We actually don’t know where millions of our hens are.
That doesn’t scare you?
The fact that that could be you too?
They covet the breasts and thighs from people like me and you.
Are you not scared of how easily you could become their food, too?
Picture from “Ignorance is Bliss” by Our Last Night
