Friday Feature: Nimalah P. Baaith-Ducharme

Nimalah Baaith-Ducharme’s work has appeared at Poets.org (where she won the Harold Taylor Prize in 2019), Nighthawk Literature, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Of Rootwork, was a finalist in the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Gunpowder Press and judged by Raina J. León. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, earned her MFA from Emerson College, and is currently a PhD candidate at Texas Tech University.

Fried Chicken Prison 

the name of your Thanksgiving sentence,

to be held consecutively for the duration of our lives

serving legs, wings, and thighs

butter and oils again making  

the underlying rhythm 

by which we conduct our year

cooking with butter even after 

Paula Deen was deemed racist 

cause we been doin’ this—

When am I gonna get my show? 

Who don’t use butter?

sizzling underneath the conversation 

of fried chicken prison 

//

we’re fat on the best food

fat, like phat, like Baby Phat, 

like beautiful fat thighs, 

stomach and chunky behind

like bragging about 

your empty plate 

fat as you move for seconds

//

During that time and every other time, 

I ate memories of white rice and fried egg—

Girls with long hair fighting at the bus stop—

Cocoa Puffs squirming with wings and legs—

Oops babies and ghetto twins— 

Corned beef and spam—  

Now you cook with white wine and prosciutto 

and we think charcuterie is a meal 

and you resent breakfast for dinner 

because you can’t show us 

how far you’ve moved 

from your mother

yelling at her boyfriend

to stop calling dinner

poor people food

and now we’re fat on the best food

waiting for you to ask 

what’s for dinner 

knowing you’re going to cook

whatever you want anyway

###

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