Eating the Bones

The women in my family

strip the succulent

flesh from broiled chicken,

scrape the drumstick clean;

bite off the cartilage chew the gristle,

crush the porous swellings

at the ends of each slender baton.

With strong molars

they split the tibia, sucking out

the dense marrow.

They use up love, they swallow

every dark grain,

so at the end there’s nothing left,

a scant pile of splinters

on the empty white plate.