Claudia Serea Free the Chickens Years ago, I wrote a poem about a locust tree blooming in the moonlight, hunched under the wind like a saxophone player under the song. Now almost every day I see a saxophone player with his song lost in the subway's noise, but I never see a locust tree or the moon. I know they still exist, though. These days, poems rustle in my notebook like frightened chickens in a cage. Shoo, go, run away! Run free, chickens, run free! Chase the worms of the world, mingle with the other things with feathers, fall in love with the wrong peacock. Make your nests in the armpits of political leaders and hatch chicks to land on Mars. Forget the locust tree, the saxophone, the moonlight.

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