Rubric for Burying a Hen

I.

Your instinct for concern
is developing, but backwards.
Either farmwork or parenthood
has diminished your animal empathy,
though some maternal haunting
may nudge your score
into the proficient range.

Noting lethargy, diarrhea, her growing
tolerance for handling, you fail
to act quickly/need improvement.

Later, you try to forget/make
a joke of/ intend to omit how
your daughter may have clocked her
on the head with the roost ramp.

II.

Your disturbance reflex
is proficient. You startle
when only two hens drop
from the hatch by morning.
Then, opening the roost, you note
the head like a carved swan’s, recoil
at the thought of her
choosing this corner to die alone.

Additionally, you may leave
the body undisturbed,
not knowing why you raise
the ramp so the others
won’t discern her.

III.

Your appetite for grief
barely approaches standard.
When little pressed
you offer flatly to the children
that she died.

You may wait until after noon
to retrieve the body, noting tenderly
the still-supple neck (not bearing
to touch the belly
with its toxic egg) then bag
and hang it from a nail in the garage.

IV.

Your observance of ritual
earns three half-stars.
To yourself and the fox
you deny the grace of offering.

Though predictably,
your aesthetic demonstrates
an expert’s preference for rehearsed
distraction. You may first
walk gingerly to the creek,
leaning on your shovel, looking
half-heartedly for the tree
carved this year with the names
of your two cats.

After the funeral, perhaps you sit
for minutes on a bench you made
by hand, so convinced are you
of your belonging.

Danielle Pieratti’s first book, Fugitives (2016, Lost Horse Press), was selected by Kim Addonizio for the 2016 Idaho Prize and won the 2017 Connecticut Book Award for poetry. She is the author of two chapbooks: “By the Dog Star,” 2005 winner of the Edda Chapbook Competition for Women (Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press), and “The Post, the Cage, the Palisade,” published by Dancing Girl Press in 2015. Danielle holds an MFA from Columbia University and is working towards her PhD in English at the University of Connecticut. She has taught secondary English since 2012 and currently serves as writing programs leader for the Connecticut Writing Project-Storrs and as an assistant editor at World Poetry Books. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two young children.