My father wasted nothing,
a feat revealed to any onlooker
privileged to bear his empty plate to the kitchen.
 
What had been, only minutes before,
a substantial pork chop or chicken breast
was reduced to a disarticulated pile of bones,
sucked dry of their marrow and cleaned
as if waiting for a child’s science project.
 
Likewise, every morsel of potato and gravy
disappeared without a trace.
 
Only the indelible stain of beet pickle juice
told the story of the meal
so recently obliterated from the plate.
 
Dessert suffered the same fate,
every trace of ice cream or Jell-O
licked from the bowl
as if it had never been used.
 
Even an apple left beside his chair
would vanish as if by magic,
without even a stem to serve as evidence.
 
He often admonished me for my wastefulness,
for not believing that fat, marrow, gristle, seeds, and stems
were all part of the responsibility one assumed
when sitting down to a meal.
 
But how could I learn his secret ways?
He always ate alone,
thereby keeping his alchemical methods to himself.


From The Bovine Daycare Center (Finishing Line Press, 2015).
Used here with permission.