a poem about a pet chicken named mary.

yesterday, i taught a creative writing class in the wednesday mentoring program at the i-lead charter school in the city of reading. i visited the same class in march and taught identity-exploring poetry. i'll share scenes and poems from yesterday in the classroom soon, but for now, i am posting a glimmer from one of the stories which inspired a sample poem we practiced reading in the beginning of class. i read the poem first, and then we went around the room having one learner (what those enrolled are called instead of student) after another speak the words of the next stanza, until we made our way to the end. mentor marian wolbers who also teaches at albright college read a few stanzas, too, along with the learners.

this picture below is courtesy of gloria sands who lives in new berlinville and first started her young life in berks county in 1938. the story of her pet chicken named mary is below in poem-form, and you can glimpse mary in this picture, although her dark feathers make it a little difficult to see her clearly. but one of her itty bitty chicken legs is evident during these picnic-minutes she and gloria enjoyed one day in the 1940s.

this story inspired the recollections of one learner who had a pet turkey when he lived in mexico as a child. hopefully they'll be a chance to post his eventual poem about that on the blog, too. the turkey had final days much like mary's, unfortunately.

and here is the poem all about mary the pet chicken. i love this story for many reasons and get the most balking, squawk-like (pun-city, i know) responses from people when they learn the tail-end of it. and some people almost seem like they will cry as they absorb the details. it stirs compassion easily and deeply in a short set of moments. but this poem is also an illustration of how poetry can an outlet for storytelling and preserving history, in addition to riling laughter and the sad face syndrome. we are lucky to have language as a resource to capture the specifics of what happens to us while we're here on earth.

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it is easy to love a pet chicken
by jennifer hetrick

my pet chicken named mary
let me dress her up in doll clothes.

just five-years-old, i pushed her
around in the wicker baby carriage

that my three aunts had laid in as
infants—mildred, erma, and helen.

after pappy poured fresh cement,
a new sidewalk from our home

to the outhouse, i set mary down
into the wet of it. i wanted to see

the footprints she’d leave. pappy
only discovered the little indents

after the cement had hardened.
i think that sidewalk is still there,

next to gramia’s restaurant.
a rhode island red hen, mary

wore pink doll clothes often,
the only color i can remember

of the fabric that kept close
to her feathers. mammy gave

me hand-crocheted doll
clothes, and my aunts gave

me ones they’d bought in town—
they lived at home, not yet married,

and loved to spoil me with gifts.
i tied a pink doll bonnet around

mary’s neck, lace gracing its edges.
i’d had mary since she was a peep,

her feathers the color of rust.
after a year, i couldn’t find her

one morning, called around all
over for her. when i asked if

anyone had seen her, my family
just laughed. we’d had chicken

for dinner the night before, yet i
called out for her for at least a week,

searching the house and the yard
for her. only at age 12 did i realize

why mary disappeared. and even
to this day, i don’t eat chicken.