In the yard's dust-bowl kingdom, hens

Scratch their ancient rhythms. Until

Blood springs – a single drop

Like a red asterisk in white feathers.

Then something older than bone

Switches on behind her eye. Machinery

Of beak and claw engages, pre-programmed,

As if the first raptor never died.

Her neck snakes forward, hooked weapon

Drilling deep, each strike

A victory for something mindless.

While the victim's flesh gives way.

After, she struts, black pupils

Contracting to pins. Her kills

Are millions of years old.

The sun burns on, merciless as always.

In the corner, I count my wounds,

Knowing now how dinosaurs

Never really left us. They just learned

To wear feathers, to live in families.

II

The Aftermath

She carries herself differently now,

A machine with bent parts. Her neck

Retracts into her body like a spring

Wound too tight, rusted with memory.

Her feathers hang wrong,

As if someone has shuffled the pages

Of her ancestry. She pecks

With the hesitation of broken things.

Her eyes, when they meet others,

Have the flat shine of old pennies.

She has learned to make herself small.

To be silent.

Nights, she roosts apart, hunched

Like something half-eaten.

Evolution has no answer for betrayal.

The moon looks down, tooth-white.