A Kitui Infidelity
The chicken disappeared before midday – no cluck,
no fluttering of feathers – but the owner didn’t notice.
Over lunch, he ate his muthokoi, oblivious, anticipating dinner,
how the houseboy would dispatch it with a twisting of the neck
then pluck it downwards as the blood drip-dripped to earth,
and then the soaking it in brine, the roast, the tearing of the legs
the biting down…

Yet it already had departed.  It was not an inside job, but maybe was,
and so the servants were interrogated.  Someone got the blame,
was found and beaten, so severely that the cop’s arrival saved him
from a lynching – stones and tyres, and sticks and matches.
What went woefully unnoticed was the nail, the telltale fingernail
of her who stretched her digit to condemn him – how a downy feather
fluttered.  What a wife.