Prophecy from the Socialist Shtetl of California
by Shelby Handler
Written by a dear friend of LF just as the project was getting off the ground. Inspired by direct quotes from Petaluma Jewish chicken farmers of the 1920s-30s, from the book Comrades and Chicken Ranchers (1993).
Here, a chorus of the dead will sing:
in the Jewish corner of the Petaluma cemetery,
where stones are stacked on graves—
as if to hold down the departed, keep them here
a little longer— but now, a wind begins. Soft at first:
a single thread of sound unwinding the spool
of time, whistling against death, stitching together
a flock of murmurs and cackles, mutters and coos.
The Jewish chicken farmers speak from inside their soil:
There’s a war in Europe and the chicken prices
is good here. Some bicker, We were an agricultural people
in ancient times, what’s so different about now?
Others grumble like broody hens, The hell with the city.
I’m going to raise chickens. And they did.
Their happy birds scratched at the earth all day long,
scrawling illegible messages blown away at dusk.
In the end, it will be acceptance that destroys us,
the ghosts cluck, We are being swallowed up in America.
The voices grow softer, feathering into fragments,
This is a wound: to get mixed up, assimilated,
to disappear. But others like us will be born
from this home. They will come, with new seeds
in their pockets. They will find us.
(Somewhere, far beyond the graveyard, a small hand
breaks open an eggshell, freeing its gleaming yolk,
balancing the glowing orb in their palm.)
They will come, from this egg cracked
for survival. They will be fed
by a broken thing. They will be split open
for that better world to come. Why not? This is our history.
