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Chicken

was crucial to the Scarsdale Diet — and despite Miss Trevor,
staunch vegetarian, appalled —I sucked down whole birds.
Intricate ribs, dense gray thighbones, the way
dark tendons fell away — who cares if the diet was useless?
I was 14, I’d just lost my innocence —
giddy from grease, protein and hormones,
the heat of the city playground in August
and the thrill of Miss Trevor’s frank disdain,

I was tossing gristle on a pile, licking my fingertips,
nothing but chicken and boys to devour:
Robert and Frankie, Skip and McVey —
seeing the world through a haze of roast meat —
all those boys, all that warm flesh, sinew and fat,
juice on my lips, those piles of shiny bones.