Last week it was one hundred
thousand ducks over in Aquebogue;
today, my neighbor found three dead
hens—wings limp, heads and combs swollen
like sourdough left on the stove to proof—
when she let her ladies out to forage
so she could meet the morning’s clutch.
An hour later and she’d already snapped
the necks of the other twelve, bodies piled
next to the backyard coop in a mass
of feathers—brown, white, dalmatian, beige—
still in a way I’ve never known them be.
This afternoon, under a penitent sun,
I helped her ready a pit
to accept the downy congregation,
tamped down the soil when we were done.
And what of this fever in me?
