Five Easy Pieces

Her hands berm and fissure like the earth
and as the tips of my grandmother's fingers
rip a wing
of chicken from the oven
I cannot imagine something
so fierce - not
a lionness, not a jackal,
not any animal of the savannah -
that could pull such smells
from a furnace
with such delicacy.
Was it the discolored apples
of your Depression youth?,
I wonder, or the respect
you have for this dust-bowl land?
This conflict plays out
in her fingers
as she grasps another hunk
and flinches
and peels it along the grain
and fingers grope and stretch
for another.