This oil's hot. Some drops
snap out and burn my arm.
I'm stubborn, still cooking this way
when I know it's unhealthy.
My aunt, who was fat and mean
and lived alone, fried chicken
on Sundays after church.
We lived in West Virginia,
we were Baptists, we were hungry
gathered around her rickety table,
its linoleum-looking surface
peeling off, the yellow kitchen walls
streaked brown by grease,
and us all waiting
for the best chicken we ever ate.
She died without teaching anyone
how to fry her chicken. She died
after a heart attack, because
she was lazy and she smoked,
because she was crazy and she took
Mellaril for years.
She was forty-five.
At her funeral, everyone said,
"She was so young." I was ten
and thought they must be stupid:
she was old, and awful, too:
she often switched me till I cried.
Now my mother's forty five.
I hope she's young,
but she's fat, she's crazy,
she lives alone, like me,
crazy from loneliness here
in California, gone from Jesus,
frying chicken,
remembering who I come from.