Excerpts from Gerald,
God and the Chickens
Jessica Hiemstra
Looking for God in unlikely places,
we found him buried in the bottom of a box of frozen chicken strips.
I think he was hiding; a little worried about the disappearance of faeries,
a little concerned about the death of the pope.
Gerald says God would like to nick a wand or a potion,
pretend he’s Luke Skywalker for a day. People are lost
without figures with staffs or wands or castles. And God’s got nothing
to hold in his hand to shake or wiggle or change the world with.
I guess that’s why he was in the chicken. He needed some quiet,
some time to think about the pope and why people get schizophrenia.
I think he was reflecting on translation, what it’s done
to the women and the chickens. Or how did he get blamed for suffering?
He looked sad there, as if he hadn’t slept in years,
so we held onto him awhile, myself and Gerald, who whispered in Polish
that it wasn’t God’s fault, that he could come out of the chicken box
and maybe tell us all a joke. Gerald says the world’s okay like this.
There are a few things that could be different, but the chickens
and the women were a good idea.
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Excerpts from Gerald,
God and the Chickens
God says he’s changed, an old man now
full of regret, contemplating paradise
and the blue veins in his hands.
He looks up and gets lost in the arc of a seagull. Wings, he says,
are marvelous, the universe is held together by flight.
But he’s still perplexed by the chicken—flightless and silly—
One could argue, he tells Gerald, chickens are more useful dead
than alive. If this is the case, he says, the universe will unravel
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