by Mildred Kiconco Barya

A bearded stranger puts a crystal ball into my hands. 
There’s a chick inside, a few days to hatching. 

Its skinny body is diaphanous white and moves— 
muscles, tissues, organs—a faint, beating heart 
inside a thin membrane of amniotic fluid. 

I squeeze the ball lightly and my heart skips a beat. 
Cluck-cluck. I close my eyes and see the image of 
Lot’s wife, eyes petrified. The ground opens and traps 
her body in a pillar of white and pink Himalayan salt 
rising from her feet all the way to the top of her head 
like a shroud. As it thickens, a few particles fall back 
and form a foundation where her feet had been. 

I do not understand what this image has to do with me 
or the chick, which I believe is innocent in all this. 

I find myself thinking about Paradise, 
wishing that the chickens would be in it.

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Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda and assistant professor at UNC-Asheville. She has published three poetry books and her fourth poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth School, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books, 2023. Her prose, hybrids, and poems are published in Joyland, Shenandoah, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, Matters of Feminist Practice Anthology, and elsewhere. She coordinates the Poetrio Reading Events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café in Asheville. See mildredbarya.com.