Without prehistoric fowl
genetically morphing
to adapt to environmental
conditions and laying
eggs with divergent offspring
there would be no chickens
no quiche, no cockscomb
to name our hats.

So, tell me, again,
how I’m the second sex?

Tamara Fricke is the 2010 co-winner of the Gertrude Claytor Award of the Academy of American Poets and is previously published by The Lyon Review, Meat for Tea, Attack Bear Press Poetry Vending Machine, Whisper and the Roar, We Will Not Be Silenced, and has been included in a number of compilations.  Her poetry chapbook Our Requiem was released in 2014.  She lives in Springfield, MA, with an ungrateful cat, where she writes grants professionally.