Chicken Literal

I am a chicken
With its head cut off.
Watch me bleed.
Don’t bother throwing seeds
Down my neck.
I’m beyond eating.
Now I’m all about
Feet and fleeing.
Flopping useless wings,
Staining feathers
Really nothing more
Than a broken promise
From my broken
Shelled beginning.
Laughing children
Chase me around the yard
Until I fall in the weeds.
I watch them
With my beady eyes
From the sticky block.
The hatchet sun, raised,
For years, aiming.
Take it from me:
You won’t see it drop.

2013