EATING FRIED CHICKEN WITH THE COLONEL



O you are not good for me, and the attraction
is something hard to explain.

Greasy, lukewarm, all the spices glugging together
blandly pricking the tongue’s tip
but when you’re in my mouth you’re all I can think of.

A palinode
to the melancholia of plastic table tops;
the benignly patriarchal smile of the Colonel,
my sometime psychotherapist.

It’s the ultimate solipsism and I forget debts, chores,
contracts, family dramas, invoices, unrequited love,
because in that glorious moment there is nothing else
beyond the certainty of that crispy battered skin.
I am busy with that aesthetically satisfying,
yielding crunch, the too-salty fries, the gravy swimming
in reconstituted potato cream
the colour of his beard.

The tiny little red plastic spoons with razor edges.
My mouth’s war of northern aggression.
Pieces of chicken fall south.

You look like Elvis’ manager, licking your fingers.
The franchise faux Dixie Southern-ness of it all.
I can feel my arteries clogging, hardening, but care not.
Suck me right off the bone.

It does beg the question, though, whether a certain
bluegrass and bourbon state can really stamp claim
on chicken served identically from China to Canada.
Compellingly delicious
agent of the Pax Americana.

Your oleaginous propaganda is getting all over my cheeks,
lips, beard, fingers, Imperial America.
Oedipal, I want to kill the Colonel and marry his chicken.
You chicken hawk.

The chicken is innocent.
The chicken has crossed the road.
Once we have gorged orgiastic on your breasts and thighs
only the residuum of a greasy box remains.

Kentucky Freud Chicken,
you’re fingerlicking motherfucking good.

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