Chickens at the Bronx Zoo

You might think
just because a kid grows up
in public housing
that he never saw a chicken.

But he heard the rooster
crow at dawn
in the next apartment
where Mr. Perez
had ripped out the cabinet doors
and replaced them with wire
and the family kept chickens
in the kitchen where other families
kept their plates
and cereal boxes.

Sometimes he would hear crowing at midnight
through the plaster walls
when Mr. Perez and his brothers
would stumble in and flip on the lights,
all the while
singing songs in Spanish
about Puerto Rican independence
and women sweet like cane.

It wasn't until they filled
the porcelain tub with coals
and were slow smoking
a pig in the bathroom
that the chickens and
the salsa music
finally disappeared
into the glare
of blue lights and sirens.

The tiger is in a shoebox jungle.
The monkeys climb in a forest
of three trees.
But there is no salsa music
at the Bronx Zoo.
No sweet smell of plantains
frying in the evening
floating up from the cages,
no colorful flags
waving from the golf carts
that scurry between exhibits.
How does one understand chickens
when they are so far removed
from their natural element?