Take Out
Oh the chicken, coated with perfect
piquant sweet yet tangy sauce.
Oh the shimmery jewel-like chicken
General Tso you do us proud!
My son will not share. He proffers one
morsel on a slab of cardboard.
The one from the bottom of the
greasy brown takeout bag.
Upstairs alone, I scarf it like a dog,
licking the cardboard clean.
He cackles with his skinny girlfriend
in the basement. She drinks diet Snapple.
She will not eat the chicken, not one bite.
She does not understand the General.
She does not understand the chicken.
We? We celebrate the chicken.
The chicken, the chicken, the chunky
chunks of chicken.
Thank you poultry for your sacrifice,
gelatinous and perfect.
No broccoli to get in the way.
Hold the broccoli, hold the broccoli we say!
Digging deeper in the foil tray.
When all else fails there is always
the chicken.
Sent as a joke to League of American Poets
