Читать книгу Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones - Lucia Perillo - Страница 15

Tripe

We were never a family given to tongue or brains.

So the cow’s stomach had to bear her last straws,

had to be my mother’s warning-bell that chops and roasts

and the parched breasts of chickens, the ribs and legs

and steaks and fish and even the calf’s sour liver

had become testaments to the monotony of days.

Since then I have understood the rebellion hedged

in its bifurcated rind, its pallor, its refusal

to tear or shred when chawed on by first

the right then the left jaw’s teeth —

until finally the wad must be swallowed whole.

The tough meat meant life’s repertoire had shrunk

to a sack inside of which she was boxing shadows —

kids and laundry, yes, but every night the damned

insistence of dinner. And wasn’t the stomach

a master alchemist: grass and slops and the green dirt

transformed into other cuts of bloody, marbled beef.

Times when she wanted that same transformation

the house filled with its stewing, a ghastly sweet

that drove us underneath the beds. From there

we braved mushroom clouds rising off her electric range,

blowing the kitchen walls as wide as both Dakotas.

And I pictured her pale-faced & lustrous with steam

as she stood in that new open space, lifting

the hair off her neck as the stockpot billowed

its sugary haze like the sweat of a hired man.