BC Poetry 2018: "After the Hatching Oven" by David Alexander (Nightwood Editions)

Counting Chickens

At crosswalks they stand on shoulders, 
three-to-a-trench-coat. One does cartoon voices. 
One preens from a billboard above the library.

Six small chicks and their ma can’t recall 
the moral of this short time together. Curled up 
on the couch, their snores sound like daisies.

They ride bikes and rent converted garages, 
yet still we drive past them on trucks. Yet still 
when they hatch, cuts of meat explode out.

Watch what they do when an egg won’t stop 
rolling. When they really go at each other, 
cha-ching! Advertising.

Before hatching, amateur fortune tellers 
often find themselves in personal banking. 
Baking? You wish. Sharp suits dignify death.

Whispering wings in a backyard run.

Who?

David Alexander's poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, subTerrain, The Humber Literary Review, the Literary Review of Canada and many other fine journals and magazines. David volunteers as a reader for The Puritan and works in Toronto's nonprofit sector.


What?

After the Hatching Oven scrutinizes the world of a most unlikely hero: the common chicken. We are launched into their evolution as a domesticated species; their place in history, pop culture and industrial agriculture; their exploitation and their liberation. These poems relish in the mastery of language and intensity by which Alexander has thought his way into the very cells of his subjects through riffs on ad campaigns, news stores, public health advisories, poems, movies and self-translations.


When?

Published earlier this month!


Where?


Purchase from the Harbour Publishing website or at your local bookstore. $18.95.


How?

Scrutinizing the most unlikely hero.

Nightwood Editions * About This Series * More Books, Please!

The copyrights of all poems included in the series remain with their authors, and are reprinted with the permission of the publishers.