Best way to eat a rattler: lop its head
well back, then gut and skin and serve up fried
in cornmeal, like a catfish; once you've fed,
you'll know you did it right if no one's died.
Hot, it's like froglegs (that old Southern dish),
but once it cools the taste grows indistinct;
a bit like chicken, but also like fish--
perhaps a fossil flavor missing link.
It's good, but something primal still recoils
as from the buzz of bones upon its tail;
fears venom in the veins, hears hiss in oil,
sees ribs all curved like fangs and sharp as nails.
What is it thrills your heart and steels your breath?
The courage of a pagan, eating Death.
1 comment:
The abrupt beginning of this sonnet catapults us in. We're cooking the damn thing before we have a chance to say no.
The description of flavor is utterly convincing. Then you admit the associational repulsion, which just now is springing to the surface in the reader, and touch on all the fears.
Very good timing.
Then that bravura concluding couplet. Excellent.
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