We learned to say chicken in many languages. In Maori, they call it heihei, in Australian, chook, in Khmer, sach mean, in Thai, ki, in Chinese, ji, in Arabic, dijaj. And we learned that no matter the culture, a rubber chicken is the ultimate icebreaker. When you pull a rubber chicken from your pack, nobody can contain their smile. Even the shyest agree to a picture. Friendships become inevitable …

Portrait of Simone de Beauvoir as a Beaver
Natalia Conte

Run your boomerang blade down my spine
as punishment for building my home of twigs,
ash, and other,
mold my curves, a makeshift hat
to heat the tips of your ears,
hiding your hair with hide of me …

To hold my son is to hold my father,
the clasp a chance to grieve again.

Don’t call us cooks, or chefs, or nutritional engineers
“Lunch Ladies” works fine for our crew, its our little joke
Some teachers treat us with silence, others consider us partners
in the daily ritual of inspiring hungry bodies and starving minds …

He will try to calculate the outcome of your words
He will assign certain symbols to your frets / / to the organic slick of your desires
He will isolate your variables 
The first equation will suggest your exigency …

I think nothing will seem so empty and deserted as these over- 
passes, mysterious and lonely, almost comical 
but mostly sad, impressive columns and arches filling 

a wide silence, bleached white by the fossilizing sun …