A poem by: Ben Dunk. 1978.

After visiting a chicken farm

WHO’D BE A CHICKEN

You squat in a small wire cage

On wire mesh

All day and every day and nights

Which they light up like day-

For all of your life.

The whole time you are fed

On biological slush.

In this unnatural period you are required

To shit not one but two

Infertile eggs each day.

Your breast bone gets bent,

Your legs are permanently compressed

You cannot stand upright

And your claws cross

You’re injected with antibiotics

Which have side effects-like-

Causing your feather’s to fall out

And give you diarrhea

When you can’t lay an egg any more

And you ‘chicken out’

They grab you by the legs

And take you squawking upside down

To an electric knife and stab you in the throat

Then, this bloody great machine grabs hold of you

And douses you in a tub of boiling water

Strips off with rubber flails your remaining feathers

Rips open your stomach

And tears out your guts-

All with your eyes open wide

In ten long agonizing seconds

Finally it chops off your head and feet.

WHO’D BE A CHICKEN!?