Thursday, January 12, 2017

Poetry Thursday

Oyster shells covered in snow.  Art installation (minus snow) at Longhouse at Evergreen State College.

Eating the Bones



The women in my family
strip the succulent
flesh from broiled chicken,
scrape the drumstick clean;
bite off the cartilage chew the gristle, 
crush the porous swellings
at the ends of each slender baton.
With strong molars
they split the tibia, sucking out
the dense marrow. 
They use up love, they swallow 
every dark grain,
so at the end there’s nothing left,
a scant pile of splinters
on the empty white plate.

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