Red shutters temper and streak

brown as another November

rain begins. I wait outside the butcher’s

door, hair heavy with the smell

of wet wool and dead leaves.

This is the figure of man, this

of cow. Show me, here, where do I cut

to make the body a feast? My hands

worry these two crude

drawings that wilt, wash clean

in ink-stained rivulets. You skin

the corpse, prize muscle from bone.

Show me. Show me where. Too quickly

he asks me to leave. I imagine

inside the butcher shifts his

weight, hefts the carcass.

 

 

 

 

Aviva Englander Cristy is a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2012, The Hollins Critic, The Spoon River Poetry Review, So to Speak, Prime Number, among others. Aviva’s chapbook The Interior Structure, will be published in Dec 2012 by dancing girl press.