Deep Fried with Slaw on the Side, Katherine Seluja

Squawking in the early hours. White fluff all over the yard. It was always about those damn chickens. Leghorn and Rhode Island Red. And now here you are, laboring in a loft above the coop. How did high on the hog turn to peck and scratch so quickly? Only a few fowl-free years back, you were living smooth as a freshly plucked thigh. Of course, there had been a few bumps. The night you swallowed down two cartons of eggs with a bottle of GoLytely. That Tyson’s Family cook-off when you accidentally set the barn on fire. It took weeks to get the smell of burnt feathers out of your hair. And you haven’t been back to Wilkesboro since. Another roll of pain, and you pull a few feathers from your mouth. That darn squawking! Must be the hen with the riot of yellow fluff on her head. The one you call Aunt Rose-On-Her-Way-to-Mass. Which makes you think of palms, and the room immediately sways. You try not to notice the walls are contracting in time with your labor. Cleansing breath, cleansing breath, you hear a voice whisper, but you think, How the heck will I cleanse my life of this? Feathering your nest was never a sentiment you took seriously. More cackles from the girls in the yard, and you feel the irresistible urge to squat. If the labor keeps up its pace, you’re sure you can get this chick out in time for supper.

KATHERINE DIBELLA SELUJA is a poet and nurse practitioner. She is the author of Gather the Night (UNM Press, 2018), a poetry collection that focuses on the impact of mental illness. She co-authored We Are Meant to Carry Water (3: A Taos Press, 2019) with Tina Carlson and Stella Reed. This collaborative poetry collection, a response to the 2016 presidential election, is filled with voices of the feminine: mythical, archetypal, and universal. She describes her story, “Deep Fried with Slaw on the Side,” as a birth story: “It was written in honor of my youngest child. Our neighbors raised chickens, and throughout my pregnancy, I’d hear ‘the girls’ clucking and squawking daily just before noon. I presumed they were announcing the arrival of their latest efforts. As I labored at home on the day my daughter was born, I felt a strange camaraderie with those hens.”