Bacon-Wrapped Chicken

stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese,
bacon brick-red and brittle as dry leaves.
Each breast arcs from a pool of grease
the smell of which is almost a sufficient meal itself.
The Jew in me is exhilarated by the prospect
of so many transgressions in one bubbling pan--
not only the milk and the mother,
but the Saturday cook, the willful disregard
for health, my goy girlfriend's joy in knowing
all this is for her. But most ofall
I think of my grandmother's homemade cheesecake,
my mother's noodle kugel, the cookies at Shabat dinner
which the Rabbi's wife provided for the whole congregation
although only thirty or so came to services.
I think of frizzy hair tucked under scarves
and pots of pasta buried in steam,
the work and the heat and the pruned fingers,
a work which I did not begin,
a work which is not mine to complete.