Chicken Cosmology - Richard Schiffman

[Larry Robinson]

Chicken Cosmology

Neither the chicken, nor the egg,
(since you asked). What came first was
the essential emptiness, the chickenless void. 
Then a beak for pecking, followed by a tongue 
for tasting, a gullet for swallowing, eyes for seeing, 
legs and wings for fleeing all that is not-chicken, 
and an anus to excrete it. Then came the chicken brain 
for dividing the world into chicken-friend and chicken-foe. 
Then the humans (at once both friend and foe) 
came to feed the chickens and tend the coops and collect 
the eggs, and wring an occasional chicken neck. 
The humans thought that they came first, but the chickens 
knew that the humans were after the eggs, which were 
before the chickens (which hatched from them). But also 
after the chickens (that laid them). Which for humans 
is a conundrum. But not for chickens, who never ponder 
which came first, because every chicken knows 
that she came first, since everything in a chicken’s 
universe is herself, not excluding the road, (which, 
since you asked) the chicken crosses 
to get to her better side.


	- Richard Schiffman
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