Dinner Party
screeching
interrupts the chatter at my table
the compliments
on purees sauces seasonings—
the foods I’ve learned
to buy to serve
to separate myself
from childhood
from powdered milk in packets
from vegetables in cans
from white bread sandwiches
with margarine
to signal my
ascension
my professional arrival—
but
out the window
on a branch
a hawk
is ripping at a pile
of bones and fur
shredding a squirrel
with bloodied beak and talons
I watch
my silverware
turn into claws
my entrée
into prey
the screaming tearing feasting
on this carrion
that carries on
until no longer
can I tell
whether it is outside
or within me
who here is predator
and guilty of
what crime
as memories
of all that I have swallowed
rise
.
Margaret D. Stetz is the Mae and Robert Carter Professor of Women’s Studies and Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware, as well as a widely published poet whose work has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US and the UK. Although she has spent many years in the world of academia, she continues to be haunted by her working-class childhood in New York City and often writes about it.
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Stone Poetry Quarterly 