Isabella Chicken Pecker

Sometimes I get obsessed with Edward Gorey and Tim Burton. In one of these periods, I wrote a poem about the subject of a drunken university argument over a feral child that it turns out doesn't exist

Jennifer gave birth to an unwanted child,
Whom she begrudgingly named Isabella,
Her husband remarked that she looked rather wild,
So they locked her away in the cellar.

Her coffee morning circle would think it crude,
If she killed off her one infant daughter,
So Isabella’s mother kept throwing her food,
And fed a hose down to supply her with water.

Then one day Jennifer moved to a new house,
Leaving poor little Izzy to rot,
She remembered her clothes, her jewellery, her spouse,
But forgot about her imprisoned tot.

Unnoticed by parents that couldn’t care less,
Isabella had learned how to crawl,
So she ascended the stairs with minimal stress,
And crept out into the hall.

The house’s new owner froze solid with dread,
At the creature dragging itself up the floor,
He panicked and threw a rock at its head,
Then calmly swept it out the front door.

The sight of Isabella face down in the dirt,
Would make the hardest heart harden,
This tormented girl, bleeding and hurt,
Dying alone in the garden.

Yet here in the thick of the countryside,
Feral chickens were known to roam,
And later that day, as they were about to pass by,
They instead stopped and dragged her off home.

Experiencing more suffering than any one person should,
Let alone a small baby, not quite one year old,
Isabella’s short story should have ended for good,
But those chickens ensured there was more to be told.

…

Twelve years later, through his double glazed glass,
A man saw something awfully strange,
A scrawny young girl pecking around in the grass,
Oh how Isabella had changed!


She bent herself forward and bobbed her head in the air,
And her nose now resembled a beak,
Her onlooker received a terrible scare,
To be confronted by such a hideous freak.

He called the police and he rang up the press,
“Come quickly, there’s something absurd!
It’s digging my lawn and making a mess,
This ghastly half human half bird!”

With her arms all bent and tucked into her side,
She cocked her head at the gathering ruck,
“Put your wings up!” A policeman cried;
Isabella stared and then let out a cluck.

Mistaking this wildness for resisting arrest,
Something this policeman particularly hated,
He approached what he thought was an obstinate pest,
Not realising she was undomesticated.

With this stranger approaching at a bewildering pace,
Isabella and her flock became scared and confused,
In an act of defence, they let fly at his face,
Leaving their predator battered and bruised.

Then the entire police force descended en masse,
And the air erupted in chickenly cries,
Izzy later woke up in a tank made of glass,
Whilst most of her family had wound up in pies.

The media granted this feral child celebrity status,
Her evident struggle leaving heart strings torn,
And after a twelve year long hiatus,
The legend of Isabella Chicken Pecker was born.

Disguising their overwhelming compulsive disgust,
As sympathy, caring and pity
People at home sobbed “It’s oh so unjust!”
From the warmth of their two point four settees.

Around chicken girl’s aquarium folks continued to linger,
And whilst studying them, she caught her reflection,
Despite her beady eyes, long hard nose and claw fingers,
She looked just like them and not her previous brethren.

Feeling lonelier and more unwanted than ever before,
Her existence now filled with new human woes,
She wanted her old life increasingly more,
So she smashed down the glass with her oddly shaped nose.

Back in the field where she last saw her pack,
A solitary chicken was mourning,
Upon seeing Isabella, the fowl turned its back,
Now a realisation was dawning.

Her life was in feathers and guts on the ground,
And no matter how hard she searched,
She’d find no acceptance in the farm or the town,
So she retired to a rooftop to perch.

She watched all the swallows migrating down south,
As a tear slowly rolled down her cheek,
She wiped it from the soft warm skin of her mouth,
Expecting to feel a hard beak.

The world has a place for both chickens and girls,
But not mixtures of the two,
And as she watched the swallows journey unfurl,
She knew what she had to do.

Fully aware that chickens can’t fly,
With a drawn out and laboured breath,
She spread out her arms and jumped into the sky,
Before plummeting down to her death.

…

Isabella was soon found and word quickly spread,
To the local newspaper’s dismay,
“Isabella Chicken Pecker Discovered Dead”,
Read the obituary the very next day.

Searching for gossip and dieting tips,
Izzy’s mum glanced at this tragic tale,
The name danced around on her finely smeared lips,
As she filed and varnished her nails.

“Can you remember that thing, honey, that lived at our place?
Was it called Isabella as well?”
She shrugged and moved onto painting her face,
To the sound of a distant church bell.