the restaurant is full
of people who are right
always right about all things
always right, never wrong, always their head kept upright
never one step out of the line
following it like the line a hen keeps
when pecking at the grains someone else has laid out for them
never leading to the gate of the coop
but only to the butcher’s flat, broad, shiny blade.\
In that line of obedient chicken,
there’s just me
a cock
just out of the line
just beyond everything right// always bound to die
in the narrow gap of the blade.\