Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Chris Gavaler
try to hand me her phone, but I’m mired in bird grease, my forearm
inside the carcass, nails raking at the sack of organ meats clinging
to the rib cage, the pink ice burning. The neck, hard and long as
the handle of a hammer, is thawing in the garbage under the sink. I
wriggled and tore it from the hole, while I thought of you, fleetingly, as
I do every holiday, imagining soup kitchens or penitentiary cafeterias,
gray gravy coagulating on powdered potatoes. I will forget to feed the
organs to the cat in the turmoil that follows. Each would fill the hollow
of a spoon.
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