Carcass Balance

The disgusting package of the phrase

designed to conceal and amuse,

reeks of the macabre that falls

in a hole as deep as any kind of love

we know. How do we imagine

boats and trucks of dark fowl parts

lining up to travel east without

the sneak of our own grief?

How begin to recognize human beings

so happy and fat on leavings

they decide to adore and then

to prefer them. And how consider

the days it takes for the unwanted

parts, already old like the ones they feed,

to reach a shelf. The alternatives

come from further afield, washed

in chlorine, clean, but even older

than the dark rags of belly and leg

from bones so small they recall

a child’s. And it’s not lost on me

that my son prefers the dark,

refuses to touch the pale breast

when I bring the bird whole in a paper

cage, fill the house with its sear

and whichever spice was left on the warm

rack. There’s always something dim

and gray about tearing apart a bird

with your child looking up, grease

on his downy chin, fat under my nails,

the heap of shred neither of us will touch,

skin, and laid the white slices across

a bed of greens. Once I loved a man

who worked a poultry farm no more

than a single summer, but ever after

shunned the meat. He’d roast and eat

the tail or snout of any other beast,

but these with only two feet, wings,

and so much airborne fluff

were the nightmare in which

we’re all completely sure we’ll end,

not with the warm surprise

of a viscous pool of blood, but the holy

terror of all our air sucked by a storm

of plucked and swirling wings.