Flash Poetry: “Chicken Kiev”

Some days, I’m just not cut out to make Chicken Kiev.
The pounding of raw, dripping chicken
(And the meat stuck under fingernails)
Curling it delicately in on itself
(And smearing the fearfully-full-of-salmonella butter over fingers,
because you know it doesn’t stick well on its own)
The flour, the eggs–
Oh Gods, the raw eggs, sticky and slippery and, just–
The bread crumbs, always narrowly escaping the walls of their container
And spreading like fireworks across the counter
And floor
Hands shaking, dropping it all into hot oil
Placing them– don’t drop them!– into the baking dish
Closing the oven with a sigh.

Trembling fingers
Aching shoulders
All from desperate precision,
from wanting nothing more than
to cower away from the task at hand.

Ahh.

Wait.

Now the cleaning begins…

(Yep, this poem brought to you by my feelings about making chicken kiev.)