COOKSHOW

By Ben Greenman

from forthcoming collection, as yet untitled

Making a meal of this rare tree-bird, which has different names in different regions—in the North and Northeast it is a known as a Grey-Throated Warbler, in the West a Black-Tipped Irene, in the South a cripsy—involves three distinct stages: first it must be captured, which is not as easy as it may appear (the bird is slow but exceptionally intelligent); then it must be turned from a living creature to a dead one, and then further transformed into a piece of what is known in the culinary industry as “pre-meat” (the head is removed, and with it the beak, and then the feet and with them the claws), bringing it closer in both appearance and function to what will eventually be food. This blissful stage is defined by the absence of what is to follow, which is heat, killing heat (though it is being applied to a being already dead), which has the power to burn both the skin and what is within it, and to make the first stage, the capture, which began with the cripsy (or Irene or warbler) in a tree, calling out happily, articulating the only word it knows, which can be translated as “freedom,” into a distant but still painful memory.