a future in which i am inevitably a chicken

you buy precooked chicken
in a little plastic container
from the grocery store because it's easier
than buying a chicken & sitting it on the stove
& telling it hush hush
this will not hurt.
the meat is cut into perfect slices
& i open the fridge to think about
where the flesh was on the body.
a wing? a chest? 
sometimes, to be sad, i watch videos
of huge farms. i don't believe they exist.
seas of chickens all trying to talk
over one another. they run like
toddlers. stumble. foot to fence. 
chickens climbing on each others heads
as if they could stack themselves 
towards some escape. i am not 
a chicken today & hopefully not tomorrow.
i used to have to cut chicken meat
at my deli job. the knife cubed breasts 
without much effort. meat is always 
becoming smaller & small pieces. 
with gloved hands, i would hold each 
lump of flesh steady as i worked.
touching animal. a far off heart beat. 
chicken feathers floated down 
from the sky at haunt me. simple feathers.
i collected them & burried them 
in the yard behind my dorm. 
in a factory somewhere the chickens
are singing to each other. they are maybe
unaware of their meat. 
teeth need chicken 
& so does our fridge & so does 
the plastic bag who would be lonely
if it were left empty of meat. 
someday soon my time will come
& i will wake up in a farm 
with all the loudness of the city.
i will try to write poems as a chicken
i am sure i will, but my chicken brain
will only flicker through images:
hand, plastic, beak, tooth, 
eggshell, god, light, fingers.
then a white darkness. flesh separated
from bone. bones ground up
into dust. dust inhaled. 
a fridge door smooching open.