“PREPARING THE BIRD” by Tim Suermondt

“A frozen hen can hurt you,”
my wife says,

plopping the Cornish
firmly on the kitchen island.

The first light of a Boston spring
makes precise and stylish lines

on one wall as I lift up the hen,
holding it like Hamlet held

the celebrated skull of Yorick.
“This can hurt you,” I say,

thinking more of the world
than I should be

and setting the hen back down,
gently, as if it were alive.

“Help me cut some potatoes,”
my wife says, “and you’ll feel better.”

Tim Suermondt’s sixth full-length book of poems “A Doughnut And The Great Beauty Of The World” will be forthcoming from MadHat Press in 2021. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.