First Place Poetry Prize
by Claudia Van Gerven
She worked with the assurance of those familiar
with the dark, the chicken coop a chapel
of rich brown shadows, shafts of dung-filled light.
Startled hens exploded
into flashes of beak and eye, then stilled to a guarded watching
of her ruffled apron, the polished leather
of her sturdy heels.
Hens circled in that syncopated shuffle
of fear and cockiness, crimson combs
limp raw flesh waving red flags before the small woman,
even hunting hens, gartered
in nylons, cotton shirtwaist buttoned
to the neck.
She scanned the clutch of canny birds, searched
for the one who had given the fewest
speckled eggs, or pecked the younger hens or ate
the rich, liquid yolks of her own nest. Her grasp
so sudden not even the fiercest bird
escaped. The squawk, the outraged wings
useless against those hands intuiting
the weakest joint beneath throb
of neck muscle and feathers. A flick
and all the fury and pathos transubstantiated
into meat. She simply walked out of the frenzy
of aggrieved fowl, carried the ordained
to the side of the root cellar, pulled down
the metal wash tub and plucked finery
from the smooth penitent breast.
When she was satisfied with the cleanliness
of the naked, pimpled skin, she would stuff
bloody feathers into a sack
to be rendered into pillows, dispose of the head
and talons, then dress
the bird in the roasting pan, humming–
as she always did when she was happy–
odd bits of hymn.