"There is a Side to the Chicken-Human Relationship that is Deep and Quite Serious," Says POET OF THE MONTH Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Monday, January 17, 2011

Hello Jeannette, I'm still snowed in, but at last the snow is melting. Please send more poems, any other info, and another photo if you wish. --Nancy Simpson

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Ok, sure thing. I"m attaching a shaped poem: I hope you can do this on the blog. It is going to be in the forthcoming Spring edition of the Great Smokies Review, published by UNCA. It's a poem that is part of my new project, which is writing an entire chapbook about my chickens. This makes people laugh when I tell them but actually there is a side to the chicken-human relationship that is deep and quite serious ... the attached poem touches on this. 

One Thing

At Zipingpu Ferry,

the news photographer snapped

them escaping the earthquake in Sichuan:

the man with a face you long to turn away from,

a landscape seared and flooded with grief. He’s wailing

some words you in your safe house cannot think of, the dirty

 jacket he’s wearing is all he brought away, except for the girlchild

asleep on his breast. Her face, though streaked with grime, is cherubic,

the cheek sweet as a cup of milk and you thank Heaven she has at last,

exhausted,  turned her back on the broken world.  The smooth and

central magic of the picture – of our world – is in the delicate cup

of her hand: a blush- brown egg — the one thing she has

held onto, even in sleep.   Its weight and curve are a

 world still unbroken,  where plenty was daily,

nested safe in her pocket.  Now it’s a meal

or a memory or – if she can keep it

warm enough long enough –

a future

-- Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

(In Dujiangyan, a hard-hit city, right, a girl held an egg as her father carried her to safety.)

Here is a link to where readers can see the photo it describes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06quake.html?_r=1

My future son-in-law Zao Wang sent me the link to the photo; he was actually in China working on a documentary about the earthquake relief efforts when he ran across it. 


TWO ADDITIONAL POEMS 

I also have a pair of little poems which are unpublished, that are part of the same project.
 --Jeannette-Cabanis-Brewin

Hen

Still as an egg she broods

over her future

and mine:

the embryonic breakfasts

of the years to come and oh -

so much more - the delight

of chicks toddling tiptoe,

tiny winglets outstretched.

The ancient history we share

brims in her goldeneye

as she regards me in silence

and waits. Will there be

a new world?

Egg

So true and constant 

a shape it means the word

for itself: ovoid.

So inert, in ranks of twelve

like the disciples asleep

on the ground all night

at Gethsemane.

So silent, and very like

a rock. Except

one morning, broken -

and here is a being

perfect and light.

                                - Easter, 2009