No Odes For Chicken
by Lynne Procope
Fowl, you fluffer
of the uninspired sandwich,
who first fathered you? Which
paled god or dim swindler sold you
to a war train line cook, or
a grease splattered, sweat sodden
diner hack? Every poor girl knows
the ways to make white meat
lay itself down in day old oil,
to make it bubble and crisp,
to dredge the thighs
in bleached flour or crumbs,
to cut the bland with salt
or sriracha, jerk or satay
or madras spice else –
all things taste like chicken,
the broken vein sputtering
in meat gone only just good enough
to eat. Oh cruel surprise
of foul fowl filling the fajita
or pressed into the panini.
I cannot bear you, coward
chicken, completing mediocre menus,
craven confouder of the deep fryer,
cruel pecker of my childhood
hands, cackling harbinger
of a sleepless dawn. I dream
how the faint light shines
on your wild eye, marked
with mild insanity. I won’t believe
in mad cows but ah, crazed chicken,
malevolent mauler of mud tracked
backyards, bantam brawler hunting
brother and me across gardens
perhaps I despair in one memory
so clear: Grandmothers hands,
the fat knuckles hooking
the neck, that premeditated flick
of her wrist the pointless flap
of your feckless wings, the single
downy unplucked barb, the hollow shaft
lingering in fried skin. The smell of you
blood pooled and draining
which seemed to stay days in the grass
and all summer. We practiced
flicking our fine bones, stretching
the tendons into the casual murder of birds.
Each month a contemporary poet presents three poems and one personal essay in which food is consumed, passed over, or reckoned with. Lynne is our September 2014 poet.
Lynne Procope is a Cave Canem fellow and a former National Poetry Slam champion. She is co-author of the collaborative collection, Burning Down the House. Her poems appear in Drum Voices Review, Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance Poetry, His Rib: Women’s Anthology, Bowery Women, The Last American Valentine, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution and So Much Things to Say an anthology from the Calabash Literary Festival. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in journals including: Pluck Literary Journal, Affilia Journal of Women & Social Work, Storyscape, decomP, Quarter After Eight, Washington Square Review and Muzzle Recordings of her performances can be found on Indifeed and SpeakEasyNYC. She is curator of the Gaslight Salon Series, managing editor of Union Station Magazine and executive director of the louderARTS Project.
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