JOANNA CLEARY

Leave

I’m cooking chicken tonight:
 
            ten lumps sitting obese in the oven
 
made good with clean of knife
 
            You said you hated the ache
 
your body felt for meat
 
            for the pause before slaughter
 
(mesmerizing as dance) 
 
            The night you said to leave, please
 
throat clammy like a wound
 
            I thought of your teeth against mine
 
each time you’d kissed me
 
            how you grew up forbidden to talk 
 
at the dinner table, my own teeth
 
awaiting against my feral lips

the juices of unraw chicken 
 
            as raw meat is silly, bulbous (naked)
 
I would’ve undressed slowly 
 
            to put my plucked skin against yours
 
had you not confessed to me 
 
            you were ashamed of raw things;
 
instead, I’ve returned home
 
            to cook supper for my family
 
and commune my half-
 
            lover and your final half-
 
harvested, hurt farewell
 
If I burn myself tasting the sauce
 
so badly blood rises to my tongue

            I’ll ask you will you stay for supper
 
then will you please stay the night
 
            until you appear with your ice-cold,
 
tender fingers to lay them one-by-one 
 
within my mouth; if it doesn’t hurt

I’ll set the table, wait as my parents
 
            and my younger brothers choose
 
the plumpest of bird-skinned bodies 
 
            before taking the remains as my own
 
I’ll use my fingers to wipe away
 
            the grease from the serving platter 
 
while I’m told I’ve laid out
 
            things so deliciously right
 
and I’ll make myself as full
 
            as you were that October day
 
when you were twelve
 
            a country girl in the making
 
refusing your father’s insistence 
 
that he made it quick and painless

until your hunger was unbearable
 
            and you devoured your dinner
 
(the chicken you’d seen
 
            growing up on the farm)
 
wanting more and more
 
            as you learned about things
 
mistaken for the forgiven

Joanna Cleary is a queer artist and undergraduate student double majoring in English Literature and Theatre and Performance at the University of Waterloo. Her work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in The /tƐmz/ Review, The Hunger, Pulp Poets Press, Every Pigeon, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Subterranean Blue Poetry, among others. Follow her on Instagram @joannacleary121.