for the Poet from Siasi, Dr. Anthony L. Tan
All new thinking does not involve chickens.

Which really is a big surprise, since chickens are

our favorite sacrificial lambs―their blood takes care

of the spirits that needed to be appeased.

Over a chicken dinner my mind wandered

into the fowl-filled afternoons in Camaman-an.

As expected from a time-traveling mind

which is truly arbitrary, I stand before the Estarte paintings

at Museo de Oro. In one of the paintings,

the Spanish missionaries have just arrived

on the banks of our river. They came

not to eat our chickens, of course (I’m pretty sure

they did eventually) but for something else.

In the other painting, you would not see chickens

but for some reason my mind entered the backyard

and saw the chieftain’s staff chasing chickens.

I came to conclude that special occasions such as, say,

Salangsang’s baptism into Christianity,

a chicken must die. I mean, as in right now, here,

inside The House That Fried Chicken Built,

in my godson’s baptism, chickens die yet again.

The long history of chicken sacrifice makes me wonder

how chicken souls are doing in the afterlife.

Are they fenced in still? Inside some coops, classified

according to their circumstances of death

(the way humans classify their dead—as saints, heroes)?

Or as reward, do they finally roam free

in an endless field littered with heaven-worms,

like true free-range chickens?