How to Eat

                       for L. Y.

My mother’s mother’s father made a table.
To build the top he shaped irregular wood
Into inlaid geometry. Each square’s corners
Center the sides of the next largest square,
From heart to edge, like a body’s genealogy.
One Thanksgiving, surrounded by everything,
Lester, my mother’s mother’s brother,
The wrestler, autodidact polymath
And self-made man, discovered
Chopped liver in a blue bowl there:

  1 lb. liver fried in chicken fat
  2 large onions fried in chicken fat till transparent
  Chop with three hard boiled eggs. Add 1 tspn. salt
  More fat to taste, several chopped scallions
  If available—