The speaker imagines himself as a rooster, since he was born in a rooster year, and tells that animal's life story. He crows at dawn over the rice fields, pecks for seeds near his grandma's cottage, and puffs up his crown ready to fight. But he is weighed down by fat, so he can never fly higher than a broken fence. The poem opens by admitting the zodiac claim is "not really" accurate, which gives the whole thing a light, self-aware tone.
The last stanza turns darkly funny. Only after death does the rooster get to travel, as minced meat served in a foreign land. The final line then links the dish to the poem itself, printed on a "recyclable plate." The speaker seems to be hinting at his own life as someone who left home and ended up somewhere far away, a bit used up, offered as a small part of a bigger meal. The mood mixes nostalgia for village life with wry, almost shrugging humor about limited ambition and what becomes of us.