Chow Call

by Deborah Tobola

In prison, animals take on a heightened significance for many reasons. This poem, which first appeared in DMQ Review and Verse Daily in 2003, explores some of those reasons.

Chow Call

Driving onto the prison grounds during chow call,
you stop at a little bridge to wait for a doe
who is guarding her fawns as they cross
the road. She must keep them safe,
away from the outside world and its
speeding highway, safe from the asphalt
dinner plate of the turkey vultures who levitate,
rise from the ground as one, rock as they fly,
circle their dead prey. To eat dinner and not
become dinner, that’s the point here
the doe instructs. Walking down the dog run,
you spy eight gulls standing sentinel on a dorm roof,
squawking, watching the yard as groups of inmates
are herded to the chow hall for dinner.
They study the blue men and discuss
potato chips. The gulls are fat with contraband
not found on the beach, where they own
vacation homes. They keep an eye on a shadow
of a cat that crawls from under the administration
building and creeps toward a sparrow.
He’s a wild kitten, not yet tamed by
kibbles and bits. The grounds are quiet
except for the officer calling chow for
the last dorm, a call answered by a murder
of crows, who crash land near the kitchen door,
acting Hollywood, loud and glamorous,
talking trash about people, cackling at the cast-
away snacks. A pack of inmates passes
and the crows yell insults at them.
Yard dogs! they taunt, making fun
of the pecking order. Look at that fish,
one crow caws and the birds dip their necks
and watch a lonely man shuffle at the tail
of the blue body of men. See you, see you
wouldn’t want to be you! The man looks back
over his shoulder. He’s not sure what they said but
he knows the mocking tone. The crows crack up.
They love chow call. You have to wonder
where they came from.