Issue 3:2 | Poetry | Maureen Alsop

Butcher’s Wife*

Maureen Alsop

I ached for his bookkeeper

brother. But my voice narrows

like the slit lids

o’ those pigs with the missin’ eyes.  I never learnt

to bear the odor.

Soes I hid upstairs

‘neath blankets ‘til 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 o’ 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.

* Published in the Summer 2006 issue of Arsenic Lobster, nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Mallorca

The Mediterranean winds tracked my lover

and me north into the mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana where

for days we read and drank port. We tromped

through the dry surface of every shadow—each

a mirror that attempted to fill our lungs with reflection. Evenings

our stone cottage rattled and cicadas disturbed us

with their splintered timbre of wormwood and wheat. Our dark

cigarettes blinked a silent Morse. The moon lacquered

our vista in a white sheen

as if alien drifts of ice had

overtaken the bay. It is summer itself

that asphyxiates. It was summer that sweated us down

into the last tuft of grass. As if we belonged only to

transience, smoke. This morning

little spots of sun fleck the hills

and we plunge into a coast raw

with rocks and kelp. I search

for a small fish as if

searching for a drowned woman, or anything

that may flicker faithfully

beneath my agitated hands.