Factory Farm Chicken

For an egg
they used you.

Sat you in
wire mesh,
steel,
that stole your life.

Clipped wings
beak,
pain inflicted without care,
you exist in a
warehouse without sunlight:
not even plant like
in their eyes.

Blinding,
life eating
light,
glares on you always:
pushes eggs
from your tired womb
at a cost of your years:
short
they will be.

A relief,
perhaps
from this jail
of chemical feed
full of hormones
if not food.

The day
your eggs stop.

Ground up,
headless,
off conveyer belt in factory,
an assembly line deal,
done for pocket books,
you become
chicken stock:
one of so many others.

Where’s the barn yard,
blessed dirt?

Better still,
freedom of full wings,
full years
of your own making.

The choice not to be
used
and eaten.

Linda Woolven has have published over 60 poems in journals across Canada, the United States and the U.K.. The poems have appeared in Journals like, Dana Literary Society, Amethyst Review, Write On, Sepia Poetry Magazine, New Mirage Quarterly, The Kaleidocope Review, Canadian Writer's Journal, Pink Chameleon and Fullosia Press. One of her poems received an award from Dana Literary Society. She also published a chapbook, called Life's Little Lessons last summer that featured 26 poems. Two of her poems will be part of a collection of poety, in book form.

Email: Linda Woolven

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