To Those of Us Who Deny

Brianna Levy

Before 2020 I hadn’t been acutely aware

Of the significance behind a man’s stare. The mental plucking and pecking at my breasts and thighs

Like I am a hen who had just opened her eyes

To where her fellow hens are constantly led.

“There’s a reason they kept us so well fed.”

I long for someone to listen,

But these words do not take hold, my eyes glisten, And I wonder what they would think in another coop.

I wonder if they would quarrel with and swoop

Around his hand that seeks to harm with patency. I decide they must exercise their agency

In other coops more than they do here.

But one downside to this revelation is that I often live in fear.

Some hens say they can’t relate—

They’re completely okay with letting a hand dominate. Because there’s no reason to fear a hand you don’t examine, Especially when that hand has historically kept us from famine. This hand gave us food, water, and built our entire world

So are we indebted to a hand that also pillages our kind, undeterred?

Some hens seem to think so.

Some women forgo our chances to grow.

I can’t fathom why some women deny how this hand treats them

And then wonder where their sons inherit vicious traits from.

I don’t understand how the hand doesn’t see what he’s doing

When the instances we interact often leave us in ruins.

Who can’t see in this universe we call a farm

That the dynamic between this hand and the hens causes everyone harm?

I don’t know when I will graze freely on this land

Without being forced back inside by my fear of the hand. Do we deserve a punishment for existing?

I’m tired of some hens being so unresisting.

And most importantly,

I don’t know where some of my fellow hens are. We actually don’t know where millions of our hens are. That doesn’t scare you?

The fact that they covet the breasts and thighs from people like me and you?

Are you not scared of how easily you could become their food, too?

Romeo Romeo

Cassandra Greco