A Fresh One

An automated chicken house:
seething throngs of de-beaked birds.

Below, brown land of droppings, shovelled
monthly along with the dead, for pippens

fall through gaps in the floor's wire-mesh
never to eat again but gifted

with space to move. Giddy there
a fresh one strides the chicken shit

searching for grains, alone in the darkness,
drunk on ammonia and freedom.