Poetry Challenge #207-Who Gives a Cluck?
Back when Buz and Tod were getting their kicks cruising Route 66, if their tummies growled all they had to do was look up in the sky, not at a bird or a plane, but west to the 22-foot-high Chicken Boy!
For more than 20 years, 1960-1984, Chicken Boy, a huge fiberglass statue a burly mannish “boy” with a chicken head clutching a bucket of fried chicken, “affectionately known as ‘the Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles’”, perched atop LA’s Chicken Boy restaurant. The restaurant closed after the owner died but Chicken Boy lived on—although buried deep in storage until 2007 when thanks to fundraising effort he was resurrected and re-erected in front of owner Amy Inouye’s design firm in Highland Park, CA.
Wondering if cruising to LA to see the Chicken Boy is still a thing? Bet your tail feathers it is! In 2010, then Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger awarded it the Governor's Historic Preservation Award.
And today, September 1st, National Chicken Boy Day, commemorates that day. Who gives a cluck? We do!
Poetry Challenge #207
What the Cluck!?
Write a Chicken Boy poem. Whether it features that 22-foot-high statue, or a boy and a chicken, or the Chicken Boys band (out of Austin, of course.)
Bwalk-blwak-blawk, just as chickens don’t all look the same—
There are hundreds of different breeds of chicken distinguished by: size, plumage color, comb type, skin color, number of toes, amount of feathering, egg color, and place of origin.[1]. . . also roughly divided by primary use, whether for eggs, meat, or ornamental purposes, and with some considered to be dual-purpose.[1]
—Chickens don’t all talk the same talk. But, no matter how its written: bwalk, cluck, peekok-peekok or some other spelling from far far away, when it comes to chicken verbalization the one universal is that hard K sound at the end.
Sooooooooo…(or should I say “sawk”). . . Think “Hard K” as you craft your poem.
And then, after you have a draft, go back over through your poem and change words, change sounds, invent words with the sole purpose of making your Chicken Boy poem sound as clucky as possible.
Set Your Timer for 7 Minutes
Start Writing!
Don’t Think About it, just do it!
And for inspiration a Chicken Boy Playlist:
Cindy Faughnan and I began this 7-Minute Poetry Challenge more than 1900 days ago. Now we take turns creating prompts to share with you. Our hope is that creatives—children & adults—will use our prompts as springboards to word play time. If you join us in the Challenge, let us know by posting the title, a note, or if you want, the whole poem in the comments.
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All who subscribe, comment or share a poem will be entered in . . .
