Ellen Bass, Eating the Bones

Eating The Bones
by Ellen Bass


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.


From The Human Line by Ellen Bass. Copyright © 2007 by Ellen Bass. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.

http://www.poets.org/


http://www.webster.it/book_usa-human_line_ellen_bass_copper-9781556592553.htm


Ellen Bass Reads "Bone of My Bone and Flesh of My Flesh":

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=YH_BXr5oCKE&feature=related

www.alleo.it/alleo_old/POETRY/ellenbass.pdf