Getting Breakfast

GETTING BREAKFAST

An admittedly precarious coop design, 

where the chickens perch like white-

hot half-domesticated dragons

eyeing the sleepy village of my back 

as I stoop below to swipe the gold 

hoarded in the straw beneath them.

 

I built it this way because I fly 

by—as the saying goes—the seat 

of my pants, which is about how far 

the chickens can wing it themselves 

when they have the pluck, catching me 

egg-handed in their hay-lined lair. 

It would be a simple fix: jigsaw 

a small hatch with hinges that open 

from the outside, the eggs resting there

for taking, all but swinging their legs

like Humpty Dumpty and me no worse 

for wear. I won't do it. Who am I

to deny myself this daily edging

of the abyss, this fighting chance

that for a brief and terrifying moment 

I'll feel the claws in my back

and enter again the shit-stained euphoria

of being wildly, wildly alive.