EGGS
Over breakfast he told us how he judged eggs at the 4H Fair inspecting all the
cardboard cartons the kids brought in marked CHOICE ORGANIC GRADE A BROWN
for cleanliness – no soil! no slime! no errant maternal feathers! – looking to see
that each carton held a true dozen – you’d be surprised how often they didn’t
he said – and to check if the shells displayed complementary layers of tone and if
they stood en pointe like a corps de ballet or hunkered down on their fatty
albumen bums in their cardboard cups as we speculated about the hens that laid
the eggs for our omelets after the crack of shell and slurry of neon yolks revealed
that in one egg a single embryonic knob displayed a smear of blood where a lone
chick had withdrawn into that sad instant stillborn between life and death and all
the while as we eat our eggs I am trying to reconcile the dilemma of chicken little
and the little red hen and realize I must face this chicken/egg thing once and for
all because I am pro-choice and afraid for the future of human ova and especially
for my granddaughter’s as she is only nine and has so many more years to live
Glint Literary Journal 