Arsenic Lobster
poetry journal |
Issue Nine Winter 2005 |
|
Butcher's Wife Maureen Alsop I ached for his bookkeeper brother. But my voice narrow like the slit lids of those pigs with the missing eyes. I never learnt to bear the odor. So I hid upstairs neath blankets till noon… lest his burnt-gravy voice slice back a my neck. My half-sleep shudders as he slips me tongue kisses. Excrement, piss & dry saliva rub my back with his marred fingers. Meat juice looms his pores—his clenched teeth grind like bones of that bull who dent kicked the abattoirs' truck every time I fuck him. Thunk Thunk my hands, quick as a axe at the till. I slam the drawer and his brother scratches my days' remains like a chicken. Yesterday, I heard from the heifer’s ribs a heartbeat —still— even as the crimson waters ran off her—like sap. |