Thanksgiving

Lemme tell ya what it’s really like. There you are minding your own business, picking at a few grains of corn fallen off the cobs they’ve been gathering, and they sneak up on you. They grab you and haul you into a backyard. There’s a bunch of kids standing around, all big eyed and jumping from one foot to the other, doing a sort of dance around a big, upturned log. 

Dad grabs you. Pulls your neck over the top of the log. Too right you’re screaming, wings and legs flapping every which way. The kids are squealing. It’s a blood sport. Then Dad brings his axe down on your neck and your head goes rolling off to one side and one of the kids runs after it and yells: “Oh, the eyes are all blue and about to pop out.” 

But you’re not dead yet. You run around headless for a while. Ninety seconds I think it is between decapitation and losing consciousness. At least that’s what Robert Olen Butler says. You chase those kids, and they run and scream, and they giggle with fear and delight. And then they pluck you, feather by feather, and the kids stick the feathers in their hair. They chop of your claws and the kids pull the tendons and make each one move. Then they smear you with fat and stuff you and put you in the oven, and they eat you. Whatcha looking at me like that for?

 You remind me of a phoenix I once ate …

At the supermarket, I once found a phoenix. It lay there plucked like any other bird. Larger than a chicken, more slender than a goose, it was on sale. I don’t usually buy what I don’t know, but I was curious.

I removed a small bag tucked deep inside it containing its head, claws, heart, liver and kidneys, which I placed in a pot to boil in stock. I added a bay leaf, salt, pepper.

The bird’s body I carefully clipped into four. The breast meat was lean, the thighs plump, the wings slender. I added the stock and some sweet paprika, and let the bird simmer for almost two hours. It was, after all, a fairly old bird.

Some say that the phoenix lives for 1,400 years before it can be reborn. There don’t always have to be ashes. It can just decompose. There’d been no use-by date, which probably accounted for the sale. 

I wondered how it would taste. Should I invite others to share my meal? What if I imploded? Or simply soared? Would there be an outbreak of salmonella? Salmonella in Phoenix? I giggled. The bird was getting to me.

I laid the drumsticks and wings out on a platter surrounding the tender pieces of breast. Did I dare taste? Would it not kill me? Or would it allow me to rise above my anxiety, and let me soar with a paprika kick? I pushed at the breastmeat and uncovered a wishbone; it glowed with a come-hither look. Come ride me, it said.

I brought the white bone to my lips and scraped off clinging slivers of flesh with my teeth. Closing my eyes, I breathed in deeply. Then I took off.