No one wants to dry out the breast before the thighs and legs are properly cooked.
The rigor of flight,
a fork in the neck,
rope around the breast.
Cooked birds
in the background
music: “Duck be
a Baby Tonight.”
Hot air circulating
in the breast cavity.
All my lady parts
in a metal bowl
next to the sink.
Girls blowing on dice.
Dykes pulling one leg
away from the body,
slicing through to the hip.
Shredding meat like wishes,
and biting. Every poem
all at once. Choking
on chicken bones.
This morning, I trussed
and skewered a fat bird
then hid the giblets
in my bedroom closet.
Boom bam boom.
Creation trapped
all over the house
and in the backyard
next to the radishes
and celery. Mouthfuls
of dirt and selfish.
Like this.
Nicole Santalucia is the author of Lesbian Dinosaurs / Dinosaur Lesbians (Bordighera Press, 2026), The Book of Dirt (NYQ Books, 2020), Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press, 2018), and Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in publications such as Colorado Review, Palette Poetry, The Best American Poetry, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Sonora Review, Fourteen Hills, The Cincinnati Review, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Out Magazine and elsewhere. She is a Professor of English, the Director of First-Year Writing, co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Advisory Council, and she serves on the steering committee of the Institute for Social Inclusion at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.
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