{"id":2627,"date":"2019-02-14T01:45:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T01:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/?page_id=2627"},"modified":"2019-02-18T00:24:59","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T00:24:59","slug":"willems","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/willems\/","title":{"rendered":"Willems"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tan online poetry journal\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Melissa Hotchkiss\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tLearning to Be Your Own Hen\t\t\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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by Rachel Willems<\/em><\/p>\n

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              after the French performance artist who tried to hatch twelve eggs<\/em><\/p>\n

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Before you start sitting on a dozen eggs, notice
\nthey are soft brown in twelve slightly different shades
\nand speckled. Spend your month remembering the speckles.
\nSpend your month reciting metaphors,
\nhow breakable eggshell actually is.
\nSpend your month imagining names for each chick,
\nthink of your own name, how loosely it fits you,
\nand yes, your parents had barely met you
\nbut could have showed more insight, honestly.
\nThink about the name of the gallery
\nwhere (you hope) all twelve chicks will be well born:
\nLe Palais de Tokyo and its location,
\n13 avenue du Pr\u00e9sident Wilson<\/em>. Think of Wilson
\nhimself, the six months he spent in Paris
\ndevoted to peace negotiations,
\nprobably divided in his own mind, not living
\nlong enough to see what short years his work lasted.
\nThink about tickets for rationing food,
\nthe war cake your great-grandmother remembered\u2014
\nsugarless, butterless, eggless and tasteless.
\nImagine growing up a chicken in Paris:
\nYou are somewhat more fashionable than other chickens
\n(it\u2019s all about stance and the tilt of your feathers)
\nbut you shrug this away and don\u2019t take for granted\u2026
\nyou survived! Overturning expectations
\nyou grew well in low-temperature incubation
\nwith only two slight abnormalities\u2014
\na crooked beak and one wing shorter than the other
\nwhich is fine for a chicken who has all of Paris
\nand doesn\u2019t often need to fly.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\n\t<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

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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\u2014the way it is both deeply essential and deeply absurd.
\n<\/span>
\nThe poem was an unmitigated joy to write, and I am grateful.
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\nBio:\u00a0Rachel 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<\/em> and The Emma Press Anthology of Love<\/em>.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2627","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2677,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2627\/revisions\/2677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}