THE POETRY CHALLENGE
Who writes THE BEST POETRY
in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod
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THE POETRY CHALLENGE Who writes THE BEST POETRY in America today?
(c) copyright 2007, David B. Axelrod |
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THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH A CHICKEN The Man Who Fell in Love with His Chicken
Ù THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS CHICKEN (For Russell Edson.) A man and a chicken were in love. The man said, "I love you, Chicken. I love your spindly legs, your feathered ass, your hard lips." The chicken could tell false flattery. She wasn't going to be had. "Pluck," she said. "Chicken," the man said, "why do you withhold your charms? Take me in your arms. I do love you. You know I do, for my heart is light as a feather and it sings." "Pluck, pluck," the chicken said batting her wings, and "pluck" again for emphasis. But now the man was angry. "You plucking chicken," he said, "I know the truth about you and so will the world. The egg came first. You aren't the pure young thing you play at. You've been laid before." The chicken paled with fright. All night feathers flew. She grew old before her time and bald, plucked from her youth untimely. And the man, seeing her so naked and frail, reaffirmed his love and ate her. (For Emily.) Pancake, don't cry. Come into this fine mouth hotel with carpet tongue and gum-ridged bar with ivory teeth for seats and warm pools for you to soak your feet. Pancake, don't fear that tunnel you face, winding down to darker places. Once you were a whole big piece, but someone has cut you into littler pieces. I've poured this syrup over you to ease the pain. Don't you wish you were whole again? Follow my tongue, I tell you-there is where to enter. Your family is waiting. He had no recall for things-a terrible memory! Whether he was supposed to kill his mother or his father. Or marry them? How did he let himself get talked into this blind date? What a beast "You'll love her," old Tiresias had said. "A real she-cat!" Love her? I can't even tell which half is which. And that supercilious smile! "What are you smiling at?" "That's for me to know and you to find out," she said. "Egad!" he screamed. "How unoriginal. That's been around since the classics." But she kept on smiling, so he kept on screaming, loud enough to melt the sand in the desert congealing to crusts of opaque glass. Opening his briefcase, he grabbed for a silver stiletto and an antique gun. This is where he forgot what he was supposed to do. Perhaps it was to kill his marriage and marry his sister. "That's it!" he screamed. "How could I have missed it? I'm on a date with my own sister! I'm disgraced." At that moment, the gun discharged accidentally, and he limped off with a wounded foot. A working man is painting a sign which says MAN WORKING. On it there is to be a picture of a man working. He has completed the lettering but has not decided what picture he should place above MAN WORKING for those who can not read so that they can tell this is a man working. He considers a picture of a man working on a sign that shows a picture of a man working on a sign that shows a picture of a man working and has just placed the mirrors in front of his MAN WORKING sign to pose in front of the sign as a self-portrait of a working man when he notices the lettering on the sign now reads GNIKROW NAM. This means he now must paint over the letters MAN WORKING and write them correctly so that he can complete the sign soon. "Time is running out," he says, working furiously. "Even now the average working man cries in the street, 'GIVE ME A SIGN,' and the revolution is close at hand."
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