Willems

4X2

an online poetry journal

Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss

  • Learning to Be Your Own Hen

    by Rachel Willems

                  after the French performance artist who tried to hatch twelve eggs

    Before you start sitting on a dozen eggs, notice
    they are soft brown in twelve slightly different shades
    and speckled. Spend your month remembering the speckles.
    Spend your month reciting metaphors,
    how breakable eggshell actually is.
    Spend your month imagining names for each chick,
    think of your own name, how loosely it fits you,
    and yes, your parents had barely met you
    but could have showed more insight, honestly.
    Think about the name of the gallery
    where (you hope) all twelve chicks will be well born:
    Le Palais de Tokyo and its location,
    13 avenue du Président Wilson. Think of Wilson
    himself, the six months he spent in Paris
    devoted to peace negotiations,
    probably divided in his own mind, not living
    long enough to see what short years his work lasted.
    Think about tickets for rationing food,
    the war cake your great-grandmother remembered—
    sugarless, butterless, eggless and tasteless.
    Imagine growing up a chicken in Paris:
    You are somewhat more fashionable than other chickens
    (it’s all about stance and the tilt of your feathers)
    but you shrug this away and don’t take for granted…
    you survived! Overturning expectations
    you grew well in low-temperature incubation
    with only two slight abnormalities—
    a crooked beak and one wing shorter than the other
    which is fine for a chicken who has all of Paris
    and doesn’t often need to fly.

Poet's Statement: In 2017, the world heard this strange news story: A French performance artist was planning an installation wherein he would sit on a dozen eggs for an entire month, trying to hatch them with his own body heat. Of course, this idea was too weird and wonderful for me to ignore. Thinking about the egg as a symbol, I fell in love with its incongruities—the way it is both deeply essential and deeply absurd.

The poem was an unmitigated joy to write, and I am grateful.

Bio: Rachel Willems grew up in Washington State and now lives in Massachusetts with her husband and young son. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, and her poems have appeared in The London Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Streetlight Magazine and The Emma Press Anthology of Love.