Starling

by Karen Resta

I once ate a starling.
-it tasted nothing like stars.

it tasted like hard muddy yard with rough grass and rocky garden
(married with  quiet conviction)
(while not being fully convinced)
to the box of vinyl-sided house, its rooms too small for real-sized people
in that working-class town.

like dirt, hard, with little granite stones for flavor
seasoned with bright green lawn grass

it’s a lot of work to
capture\
kill\
pluck\
eviscerate\
clean\
season\
cook\
a starling.

ignore if you will the delicate wings,
the goldenrod beak
the sharp warrior sword of tail
discard the grasping horned feet
just do the work
for the miniscule mouthful
of tough gamy meat

and there you’ll have it.
A starling for supper, and
an old woman with steady eyes
carefully watching the birdtrap she’s set
there in her yard

a woman who remembers a farm in Italy
now teaching me her childhood ways of
hunger
and appeasement.
trusting me now with birds who sing,
little birds who can be eaten.

Karen’s work is at the Best American Poetry Blog, The Christian Science Monitor, Red Rose Review, eGullet,  Serious Eats, One Million Stories, and the danforth review. Herblog ‘Postcards From the Dinner Table’, has over 1600 facebook fans and her blog ‘foodgeekology’ harbors a large collection of food art, history, and culture.