A Fox and a Chicken
Don’t forget, there’s also
a sack of corn and a rowboat
in the riddle. There’s a man
whose task it is to row the boat,
and rowing, to figure out how
to get the chicken and the corn
and the fox across, never
ferrying more than one creature
or thing in a crossing, never
leaving one being alone
with anything or one that looks
too good not to eat. What
looks too good not to eat
depends on how hungry you are.
Has a chicken never chowed
down on a fox? Would a man
never devour a boat? Stranger
buffets have happened. But
let’s stay focused, let’s help
the man as he rows the chicken
across, then, alone goes back
for the fox, who he drops off,
picking up the chicken for the
journey back, leaving her to haul
the sack of corn before returning
for the last trip with her. It’s
a palaver–a word that comes
from the Portuguese word
for word–palavra–a sailor’s
slang that came a long way
on a boat and can mean
one thing to the chicken,
another to the fox, and yet
another to the man–i.e.,
an overly elaborate procedure,
an important conference between
two groups that don’t speak
one tongue, or the sort of idle
chatter a man going back
and forth across a lake
makes to a chicken or a fox
or to himself. It’s a riddle,
this living. And when at last
the man is done, he sits down
inside himself, the days
lapping at him, and finally
he apprehends how
like a dream this is, how
he must be the fox and
the exhausted chicken,
the fraying sack, the boat
and the lake he rows again
and again, and that gathering
dark we’ve hardly begun–
such a palaver–to speak of.
Andrea Cohen, from The Threepenny Review (Summer 2025)