Issue #1 Winter 2002
Rubber Chicken
by Andy Young
You are a bit of an air headand have unconvincing feet,
but just look at your credentials!
Inspected by the U.S. Department
of Fowl Play, sealed with approval
by the National Register of Silly Things™.
Born April 1st, of course,you sweet little fool,
but who knew your noble origin:
invented for the French Revolution,
strung sometimes to the musket
for luck, chicken choking soldiers
needing the hard belly laugh.
On your tag you are drawn
in animate splendor, feathered
again (as if feathered you were)
puffed and proud, deservedly
adorned with valorous shield
and a scroll of lofty proclamation:
LIBERTY FOREVER!
Your crest: one slick jagged ridge,
its red echoed in a testicular
flop hanging under the beak --
beak lifted wide to sky
as if to speak -- Oh! Speak,
rubber chicken in your cluck cluck
voice. Tell of your dignified service.
You have dimpled skin
like your real chicken kin,
but none of their nasty habits.
Smoothly molded,
just a lumpy hint of wings
that can never fly you away.
So clever, you even bypass
gender with one simple,
brilliant universal O cut
between your stick-straight legs.
But then, you seem cock
after all, stiffening straight
when I squeeze you at the base.
I will adorn you with beads,
tie ribbons round your ankles
-- well, just above your feet.
Harvest of the Flowering Latex,
you have a synthetic, modern-life
familiarity and the macho smell
of road trips, unlubricated condoms.
Chicken, come walk
by the lake with me.
Chicken, let's join our lives,
make a new mythology
with half-human, half-rubber
babies that we'll pray get
my legs, your lack of guile.
You are kind of immortal since
you never age or, um, biodegrade,
and only dim a little with a beige
accretion of life's dirty years.
Sing to me, rubber chicken,
sing the wisdom of the jester,
not-to-take-self-seriously.
Teach me to laughas big as I cry.©2002 Andy Young
Andy Young is the poetry editor of the New Laurel Review. Her chapbook, Mine, was published in April 2000 by Lavender Ink, and All Fire's the Fire is forthcoming from Erato Press. She was recently awarded an Artist Fellowship from the Louisiana Division of the Arts and was nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize. Her poems have been published in journals such as Exquisite Corpse, The Florida Review, Appalachian Heritage, Concrete Wolf and Dublin's The Stinging Fly. Her words have also been featured on broadsides, jewelry, and in electronic music. She is an artist-teacher in the creative writing department of the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.