Ortolan Feast

Ortolan Feast (From the bird's perspective)
By Justin Parrinello

The sweetness of this flesh and fat is the ambrosial god!
The pungency, call it bitter innards and viscera.
This is the suffering, crucifixion and ascension.

The small delicate bones lacerating your gums
as they splinter between your holy teeth.
The salt of your blood mingling with the richness of this winged mystery,
this is the holy spirit; three united as one.
Cruel and beautiful, and dinner ceases.

Net spread in neat canopy, take us alive! Take us home!
To the chewable vitamin remedy of plucking and blinding;
I love my small cage.
I love my oats and millet and those paunchy figs that you feed to me in the evening.
I love how when I haven't eaten enough you help me.
I love whelming in your brandy snifter.
I love my eight calescent minutes alone
(in the solitude of your oven.)

I love your lips hugging me,
enveloping my feathers and debility.
The tuxedo jackets lurk beneath those postcarded coves.
Alvine birds are ossivorous only,
and yet absinthial themselves when roasted tenderly without spice.

Bought for moments with the homeliest of twelve sisters, wherever sugared necks are sold.
We're bringing it all back---my lungs and stomach full of armagnac or not.

Is it not worth a wench to quench your petticoatted pedal lips?
Mincemeat weevily over dry-ice and chewing.
The body of rainwater and rowans,
the wheat of Morocco.

Salt of the Mediterranean,
lavender of Provence---but its all face down!
Yes I’m still faced down.

I love the shrouds and napkins
that all of you wear on your faces,
They're beautiful like all of you, as you altogether feast on me.
God can see your shame, I am not the soul of France.



© Justin Parrinello (July 1st, 2006)