Welcome to Poetry Friday, hosted this week by Denise HERE. Thank you, Denise, for hosting!
What is Poetry Friday? Find out more about it HERE.
I learn so much from reading the Poetry Friday blogs each week, about poetry forms, about poets I have never read, and more. Last week, I learned about the ghazal.
What is a ghazal? It’s a poetry form that is not easy to write. The Poetry Foundation describes it HERE. And Catherine Flynn, and others have recently written and posted ghazals.
The form isn’t easy, and my first attempts failed. Actually, it seemed impossible, but poetry writing requires feeling stumped. I needed the right subject and I stumbled upon . . . .fried chicken.
My ghazal is about my mother who was the chief chef at our family restaurant. I think if she were here she might like it. The restaurant is long gone, and this is one of the few photos I have. Here I am in the 1990’s with my two boys, Phil and Matt.
When this photo was taken, my brother owned Scully’s and my sons thought it was cool to visit Uncle Mike in the kitchen.
When the restaurant opened in the fifties, the first item on the menu was fried chicken. It looked like this:
Hungry yet? My mother cooked a tons of it. She’d roast huge pans of chicken halves in tomato juice sprinkled with Alamo seasoning then batter, bread and fry the roasted chicken in a deep fryer, sprinkle it with a touch of celery salt and serve. Here’s my Mom in the kitchen.
The ghazal poetry form is described on the links above. I can’t claim this follows the form perfectly. But here it is. There were days when Mom would have have surely referred to our popular dish in derogatory terms.
SCULLY’S FRIED CHICKEN My mother raised her kids making good-lickin' chicken, plated and parsleyed tons of gold frickin' chicken Standing by the stove breading breasts and thighs, Dad at the bar served the hot quick chicken. Southern fried from New York, not New Orleans, still it was crispy good kickin’ chicken. Fried scallops, too, fried shrimp and fried fish, but most of our customers wanted bone pickin’ chicken. Florida bound at the end of thirty years spent serving mouth-watering plump thick chicken. © Janice Scully 2021
Stay well, everyone. My thoughts are with all the brave teachers, children, and health care workers. Thanks, Denise, for hosting. You will find a list today’s Poetry Friday blogs on her blog, HERE.