Livestock

When they come to pluck me, I appear
neither girl nor boy, clam nor cock.

I have neither hooves nor snout.
But I do have claws; I can grunt and growl

and show my teeth. I do not need wings
to create a windstorm, I do not need talons

to break skin; I can snarl and scrape.
I can unhinge my jaw, to fit a head twice

the size of mine inside. I can be razor-backed
and spike-edged when he tries to skin me,

unscale my silvery back, debone my brazen
hen-hide. I will be foul-mouthed and crooked-necked.

I will be the chicken-head they know me to be,
if it will save my life. When he comes for me,

I will remember the coop, how they gathered the fowl
girl up by the feet with warm hands and cooing.

How her brown hung low when they entered her
into the guillotine and severed her head. How they

plucked her body until she was bare. I will remember
the blood and what happens when they want you as food.

________

[1] Khalisa Rae’s “Livestock” first appeared in Issue 17 (September 2020) of Sundog Lit.

Khalisa Rae is an activist, poet + freelance writer, and educator in Durham, North Carolina, and a graduate of the Queens University MFA program.

Her recent work has been seen in Sundog Lit, Crab Fat, Damaged Goods, Glass Poetry, Brave Voices, Luna, Luna, Hellebore, Honey & Lime, Tishman Review, the Obsidian, New Shoots Anthology, Roses Lit, among others. She was a finalist in the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, a winner of the Fem Lit Magazine Contest, Voicemail Poetry Contest, and the White Stag Publishing Contest. She is Managing Equity and Inclusion Editor of Carve Magazine and Consulting Poetry Editor for Kissing Dynamite. Her forthcoming collections, Ghost in a Black Girls Throat are forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2021 and Unlearning Eden from White Stag Publishing 2021. She is currently the Writing Center Director at Shaw University and also the newest writer for Black Girl Nerd, B*tch Media and Body.com Magazine.