American Life in Poetry: ‘Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty’ by Jane Mead

There’s an old joke about a truck with a five-ton license and 10 tons of canaries on board. The driver had to keep getting out and banging his fist on the side to keep half the canaries flying. Here Jane Mead, who lives in Northern California, gives us another truck full of birds. This keenly observed poem appeared in the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 2015. Mead’s most recent book is “Money Money Money/ Water Water Water” (Alice James Books, 2013).

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty

What struck me first was their panic.

Some were pulled by the wind from moving

to the ends of the stacked cages,

some had their heads blown through the bars –

and could not get them in again.

Some hung there like that – dead –

their own feathers blowing, clotting

in their faces. Then

I saw the one that made me slow some –

I lingered there beside her for five miles.

She had pushed her head through the space

between bars—to get a better view.

She had the look of a dog in the back

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog

who knows she’s being taken along.

She craned her neck.

She looked around, watched me, then

strained to see over the car – strained

to see what happened beyond.

That is the chicken I want to be.

Poem copyright 2015 by Autumn House Press, from the Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, 2015, and reprinted by permission of Jane Mead and the publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.