January The writing is slow but steady. My friends speak of raising chickens once this long winter is over. I wonder about alectryomancy, writing by divination. A white hen is set near a board divided into twenty-six segments. You place grain on each segment, then take down what words are spelled out when the hen eats the grain. On my worst writing days, that’s what writing a poem feels like. Only I am not the hen. I am the grain.
