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Chicken Dream Poem

Dreamed before 1983 by Hastings Wyman, Jr.

Row upon row
of wire cages
contain thin
and molting
chickens whose
eyes know life
begins and ends
within wire
walls. A tall
bluesuited woman,
hair neatly
tucked, opens
double doors.
Hundreds of
pure white
chicks flood
past her protests.
Rabbits say
No as chicks
swarm into
the garden.
Children cup
their hands
about the
chicks and lift
them to their
smiles. "Now
we know how,
so we'll go
where we choose,"
chirp chicks,
hopping in
spring grass.

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.3, no.2, fall 1983, p.77)

EDITOR'S NOTE

This tall skinny chicken-poem almost certainly riffs on William Carlos Williams's classic little imagist poem:

So much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

But Wyman's theme is freedom. Who's being freed, though? Some inner side of Wyman? Or is it external, is the dream joyfully noting social change? If so, what? Animal liberation? Children? The elder chickens seem doomed, resigned, hinting at a generational shift. But given the date--when calling women chicks was still in vogue--they might well be women, too.

--Chris Wayan



LISTS AND LINKS: birds - oops! - prisons & freedom - kids - suppression & inhibition? - dream poems in general - creative process - more from Dreamworks
a second vertical chicken dream poem a la Williams: Sky-Thaw

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