Nicole Walker
There are days when I clutch at the Great Sadness as if it will give
me something to eat. A chicken drumstick to gnaw on as I go
through my day sorting out this excellent blue
sky from this less excellent brown one. I don't mind,
really, the way the tendon gets stuck in my teeth. I have
spoken about love and cruelty before. I know this floss
well. A line that demarcates teeth is the same line
that divides sun from smog. It wouldn't be a world,
at least not our world, if we didn't have chicken parts
to organize it. My mother is selling her condo in Salt Lake.
I'm looking into buying a bigger house so she can move in
with me. Where do the Salt Laken mothers
live when they come? The kids’ rooms, I guess,
which is fine except the cats sleep in there and Erik
sleeps with the dogs and I sleep upstairs dreaming
of chickens. Good chickens with their legs still
attached, eating vegetarian like they should, like we
all should if we are good people but we're not
that good so we take the legs and wings off
of the bird. I like the kind with hot sauce
from Buffalo or the thighs with skin broiled.
I eat them alone in my bedroom. All skin.
I like breasts grilled and all the body smoked.
The whole body roasted. Once, I tried to make
a fricassee. I left the stove for just one minute
to go to the bathroom (I promise I washed my hands),
but when I came out I'd burnt the garlic. The skin
of the chicken thighs too was charred and venting
upward even though I have a downdraft vent and I
thought maybe this is how they can fix Salt Lake's
smog problem. Downdraft. Worst air quality in the nation. Known
by the Paiute tribe as the smoky valley, that place in winter
always socked in thick but now with the oil refineries
and two million cars pumping particulates into
that smoke the whole valley is a murky soup
thicker and more punishing than the Great Salt
Lake which is its own kind of sinking problem.
All the mercury in the world wants to land
there. Heavy bottom. Lower than salt. Imagine how we could,
in a drought, the summer-end of the smog problem, suck
that broiled sky into the Great Salt Lake
glimmering with the promise (lie) of water, the suggestion
that maybe this one place will survive the great drying (sink
carbon. Sink mercury) of the west. That lake
you can see from outer space and then you hike
out to the shore only to find it is as good and useful
as the over-seasoned chicken you burned last night.
I took the problem, with a bucket of fried chicken,
not from KFC but from Meiers the last night,
to my mom's condo she loved because
we could sink deeply into outdoor furniture. We did sit
right on the patio, paper napkins flying everywhere,
bees diving for the chicken and she said, “Maybe this
isn't the only place to live. Maybe it's not even the best
place.” Which is exactly what the chicken thought
at the Tyson food factory and is exactly the thought we choked
down even though we didn't mean it at all. It was only
three in the afternoon. Not warm enough for patio-sitting.
Not warm enough for bees. We went inside for the last
time because the dark was coming early. You could barely
divine the sun out in this entirely non-excellent smog time.
Nothing to see and nowhere to sleep and the difference between
everything, including the chicken and especially the day, blurred.
I can't forever rely on my mom to tell me when it's morning.