Lori Green
Sustenance

I eat my lunch
to keep the chickens quiet.
I do not let them in

the kitchen, I never do.
How long they’ve stayed to peck
and bob at my windows, cluck
their ruckus at every new address.

When I tramped down that alley years ago
I hit each wall with one tough sapling,
clutched my partner’s hand at a pretty cage
cast off on the cobblestones.

God knows how I took the lock
off. I swear I heard them bocking
to the moon. I still keep
what pearly feathers fell, in a box

in a drawer beside the candlesticks,
for proof, because they woke me
two weeks later,
noisy and in fits until I breakfasted.

I never used to take that meal. Now
if I keep my belly filled
and still, they talon
at my door,
but rarely.