Turkey Soup

By Marissa Landrigan

On Thanksgiving, after the turkey is carved and gutted – after we slice through half of the twenty-pound bird my mother insists on ordering, though there are only ever seven of us for dinner – my father and grandfather return to the half-spent carcass and harvest the rest. They dig their thick hands into the ribcage. Pull out shards of meat darker than a roux, dripping with bone grease. Toss them by whole handfuls into our biggest saucepan: boil, simmer, freeze, store. The dark interior of the body, transformed into food. Steams the kitchen, fogs the windows. Warms our insides later, on the frozen winter nights.

Photo "Turkey Stock" provided by Timothy Vollmer, via Flickr creative commons license.