Why Did the Chicken Remix 

The road is a small horizon,
grasshoppers riotous at the edge.
The light of the farmland sun
follows the hubcap’s gleam.
The gate left open, long-toed
feet at the road’s white rim.
She could only fear the fox
for so long, the squawking
assemblage. The other side
rises past the verge. A white
bird among magpies and crows,
she steps into the road, music
against her claws and beak.
Terrible promise of what tilts
beyond: the heft, the lift,
the ascending. Chasing the sun,
it ends in dust. Angels unfurl
at the grounding, fine-toothed
and soft to bear the loss.

Brittney Corrigan is the author of the poetry collections Daughters, Breaking, Navigation, and 40 Weeks. Solastalgia, a collection of poems about climate change, extinction, and the Anthropocene Age, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2023. Brittney was raised in Colorado and has lived in Portland, Oregon for the past three decades, where she is an alumna and employee of Reed College. She is currently at work on her first short story collection. For more information, visit http://brittneycorrigan.com/.

Published February 7 2022