At five, I watched my grandparents chase & put down chickens with expert precision on their Watts home-farm. Grandma used the bloodless snap-neck method, the bird under her left arm feeling where the skull meets neck, snapping the head in a down & out movement. Granddad's euthanizing technique was swift but bloody, wrestling the squirming bird to a tree stump. The bird's eyes would widen, its bloody beak open flailing, clawing unable to escape grandpa's tight grip stretching its neck between two nails, lopping its head with his ax & blood spewing as the fowl ran wildly until collapsing. At our Jordan Downs public housing cinderblock #33, mother plucked & quartered the lifeless carcass. Blood drained weary down the sink. She cut, rinsed, & parted pieces: outers like legs, thighs, backs—innards like livers & gizzards. She massaged each piece with oil, patted them with flour, pepper dropping them into hot lard to pop & fry like magic. Transformed from loose skinned, to crinkly crunchy wings & drumsticks blood cooked snapdragon-red near chicken joints my mouth moist when served with kidney beans, yams mustard greens, & apple cobbler dessert. One day after dinner, belly full, I raced outdoors to the squeaky seesaw & tripped. Cutting my tongue between my teeth, I tasted blood.
Ron L. Dowell holds two Master's degrees from California State University Long Beach. In June 2017, he received the UCLA Certificate in Fiction Writing. His poetry resides in Penumbra, Writers Resist, Oyster Rivers Pages, and The Poeming Pigeon. He's a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow.
