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426: Lesson: Chicken Soup
This week, we’re featuring poems about food and all the many ways it sustains us. Because food is community and memory. It’s struggle, joy, and so much more.
Read an automated transcript
Lesson: Chicken Soup
by Christine Kitano
My grandmother pours salt
into my right palm, places thin slivers
of garlic in my left. She explains
something about blood, how to salt
the raw bird to drain its fluids,
but my mind already wanders:
I watch the chicken shrivel but compose
instead the grandfather I’ve only met
in story: daybreak, he’s just finished
mopping up in the buildings
that sculpt this city’s skyline, but it’s
someone else’s view of Los Angeles.
The immigrant sees, not the postcard-perfect lights,
but the scuffed tiles, dust-lined desks, the darkening
throats of toilet after toilet.
Home, he tiptoes upstairs not to wake
his daughters, holding his shoes
like a thief. He’s fired
for stealing a roll of toilet paper, a can of soda
for my mother. Children are nothing
but trouble, my grandmother says,
shaking a wooden spoon. My mother claims
the story otherwise: it was she
who accompanied father to work, she
who stole a box of stale donuts, she
who lost the family’s first job. Grandmother
shrugs and repeats the same
conclusion. Never have children, she says,
though her expression is hidden
by the steam now rising from the pot.
It’s a simple recipe: boil until the meat
falls from the bones, easy, like a girl
shedding a summer dress.
Last night, I cooked for friends.
After dinner, my friend handed me
his one-month son, who only
blinked when I nudged my thumb
into his fist. Earlier, washing the pale
bird, I struggled to keep the body
from slipping through my hands: I held
its small-fleshed form under cold water,
pulled the giblets out the round hollow
between its ribs and was surprised
to be surprised when it didn’t
make a sound.
"Lesson: Chicken Soup" by Christine Kitano, from SKY COUNTRY by Christine Kitano, copyright © 2017 Christine Kitano. Used by permission of BOA Editions.
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By American Public Media
4.8
11971,197 ratings
This week, we’re featuring poems about food and all the many ways it sustains us. Because food is community and memory. It’s struggle, joy, and so much more.
Read an automated transcript
Lesson: Chicken Soup
by Christine Kitano
My grandmother pours salt
into my right palm, places thin slivers
of garlic in my left. She explains
something about blood, how to salt
the raw bird to drain its fluids,
but my mind already wanders:
I watch the chicken shrivel but compose
instead the grandfather I’ve only met
in story: daybreak, he’s just finished
mopping up in the buildings
that sculpt this city’s skyline, but it’s
someone else’s view of Los Angeles.
The immigrant sees, not the postcard-perfect lights,
but the scuffed tiles, dust-lined desks, the darkening
throats of toilet after toilet.
Home, he tiptoes upstairs not to wake
his daughters, holding his shoes
like a thief. He’s fired
for stealing a roll of toilet paper, a can of soda
for my mother. Children are nothing
but trouble, my grandmother says,
shaking a wooden spoon. My mother claims
the story otherwise: it was she
who accompanied father to work, she
who stole a box of stale donuts, she
who lost the family’s first job. Grandmother
shrugs and repeats the same
conclusion. Never have children, she says,
though her expression is hidden
by the steam now rising from the pot.
It’s a simple recipe: boil until the meat
falls from the bones, easy, like a girl
shedding a summer dress.
Last night, I cooked for friends.
After dinner, my friend handed me
his one-month son, who only
blinked when I nudged my thumb
into his fist. Earlier, washing the pale
bird, I struggled to keep the body
from slipping through my hands: I held
its small-fleshed form under cold water,
pulled the giblets out the round hollow
between its ribs and was surprised
to be surprised when it didn’t
make a sound.
"Lesson: Chicken Soup" by Christine Kitano, from SKY COUNTRY by Christine Kitano, copyright © 2017 Christine Kitano. Used by permission of BOA Editions.
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