[Matt Q]

Back at the chicken shack

I was the first child this factory produced,
brand new off the assembly line
way back in June of 1970.
Before that it was a chicken factory,
folks say, churning out hens
for the battery market.
People say a place retains its memories,
that they soak into the walls
and trickle down to the foundations.
People say a lot of things.
And, of course, I’ve heard all the jokes.
Every time I cross a road.
And, yes, I may have gone to seed,
but I’ve never felt an urge to eat the stuff.
Never been broody, never built a nest.
Never tried to lay an egg.
Never did go in for waking with the dawn.
Besides, I checked the records.
All the old machinery was melted down.
Those new machines were clean.
No chicken in me, I always tell them.
And yet, here I sit in my cage, pecking away
at this keyboard all night long.
.

[Joe Crocker]

Plenty of chicken-related jokes here, which leaven what is rather a gloomy tale. The chicken factory was replaced with a human factory it seems. One industrial process supplanted by another. And the result turns out to be not very much different. The confined N pecking at their keys.

I think you could lose or condense lines 18-20 about checking records and new machinery.

I was only vaguely aware of “Chicken Shack” as a restaurant chain. The title makes sense in that context, but it always takes me to the Stan Webb blues band of the 1960s. Christine Perfect sang a great version of “I’d rather go blind” with them.

[Susan McLean]

I seldom check out non-metrical, but I can't resist poultry appreciation. This seems sharp and apt to me. I assume that you mentioned the machines as a segue into the computer keyboard you're pecking away at. I didn't know the term "battery market" but it has a lot of associations that work for me. One phrase you didn't play on that occurred to me was "Nobody here but just us chickens." But perhaps that one is unfamiliar to you.

Susan

[Max Goodman]

"Every time I cross the road"! Ha!

The turn at the end is strong. The poem--many moderns are likely to feel--is about me. We can't escape our destinies, however much we deny them.

[Mark McDonnell]

I like it, Matt. Funny and tragic, with a drop of something nightmarish.

I did wonder if the ending would feel stronger as “pecking away all night long”. Something along these lines (I swapped, “And yet” for “Still” too. Again, just an instinct):


Never did go in for waking with the dawn.
Besides, I checked the records.
All the old machinery was melted down.
Those new machines were clean.
No chicken in me, I always tell them.
Still, here I sit in my cage, at my keyboard,
pecking away all night long.

[Matt Q]

Joe, Susan, Max, Mark

Thanks all for your comments.

Joe,

The title comes from an old classic Jimmy McGriff track of the same name, though I'm not expecting readers to know that. Which might be a good thing, as otherwise they might think of a different kind of keyboard at the end of the poem ... I didn't think of Chicken Shack, the band. Chicken shacks seem to turn up a fair bit in old blues tunes, though, which I guess is where Chicken Shack got their name from. I also wasn't aware of the eateries called Chicken Shack. Googling, I'm not sure it's a chain in the UK, just people independently using that name. It looks like there's a chain with that name in the US (maybe just in Detroit). But I guess it's a more likely association that Jimmy McGriff. So, hmm.

I do want the N making sure he's not a chicken, that the factory hasn't influenced him, but I'll think about whether that part can be tightened.

Susan,

I'm glad this is working for you. And that it tempted you into non-Met! I think the "nobody here but us chickens" phrase might be more common in the states.

"Battery" applies to the system of tiered cages in rows and columns, designed for the mass farming of egg-laying chickens. In the UK the term also gets applied more widely, so e.g. "battery hens" and "battery-farmed" etc. I'm guessing it's not commonly used in the States, then? So the idea is that this what the factory is producing these chickens for. I worked at a battery farm one once, for a while, as a teenager, sweeping out on of the chicken sheds on a Saturday. Each chicken had it's own tiny cage that it could just about stand up in, and the cage floors were sloped so the eggs could roll down to the collection point. There were thousands and thousands of chickens per shed. It was a very grim place, indeed.

Max,

Thanks for your reading of the poem. It's always good to know what's come across.

Mark,

I think I know what you mean about the close. "at my keyboard all night long" maybe isn't the strongest closing line. At the same time I like that the preceding line is all chicken, so to speak: "... in my cage, pecking away", so that it's not till the final line that the human aspect is revealed, kind of a punchline. Anyway, I'll have a play around with it.

Thanks again everyone,

Matt