Spatchcock
We always squabble over
who gets the turkey leg and thigh--
the breast’s too dry, and tasteless
as paper. This Thanksgiving
I brine the costly bird (millions
died of flu or were slaughtered
to prevent the spread). It perches
on its headless neck for two days
in a tall stainless-steel soup pot.
On the morning, I rest it on
the granite counter, hack out
the backbone with scissors
and knife, invert it to split
the breast, settle it on chopped
purple potatoes, red carrots, parsnips
from our garden, speckle it with sage,
scatter oregano, parsley, thyme.
Splayed, the bird seems undignified,
shrunken to half its normal size.
To an old only child, grandparents
and parents seem especially gone.
Fall’s harvest—Brussels sprouts,
golden butternut squash—conjure
dinners when my nearly toothless
grandfather ate his russet potato’s
flesh and handed me its crisp skin
to lavish with butter.
Candles on my mother’s frayed crimson
tablecloth glimmer on her crazed gold-
rimmed plates. Today’s bird is tender,
and even the breast meat tastes like thanks.
Farm girl, rock climber, and professor, Karen Kilcup feels fortunate to be getting old. Her book The Art of Restoration received the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and Red Appetite received the 2022 Helen Kay Poetry Chapbook Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has a forthcoming collection, Feathers and Wedges.
We always squabble over
who gets the turkey leg and thigh--
the breast’s too dry, and tasteless
as paper. This Thanksgiving
I brine the costly bird (millions
died of flu or were slaughtered
to prevent the spread). It perches
on its headless neck for two days
in a tall stainless-steel soup pot.
On the morning, I rest it on
the granite counter, hack out
the backbone with scissors
and knife, invert it to split
the breast, settle it on chopped
purple potatoes, red carrots, parsnips
from our garden, speckle it with sage,
scatter oregano, parsley, thyme.
Splayed, the bird seems undignified,
shrunken to half its normal size.
To an old only child, grandparents
and parents seem especially gone.
Fall’s harvest—Brussels sprouts,
golden butternut squash—conjure
dinners when my nearly toothless
grandfather ate his russet potato’s
flesh and handed me its crisp skin
to lavish with butter.
Candles on my mother’s frayed crimson
tablecloth glimmer on her crazed gold-
rimmed plates. Today’s bird is tender,
and even the breast meat tastes like thanks.
Farm girl, rock climber, and professor, Karen Kilcup feels fortunate to be getting old. Her book The Art of Restoration received the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, and Red Appetite received the 2022 Helen Kay Poetry Chapbook Prize. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has a forthcoming collection, Feathers and Wedges.
