pour moi, c’est et toi 1998

dorette snover

 

smash the garlic, chop the bulb, rubbing salt into sticky raw flesh.

 

whisk, then thin the stream, boiling stock (leached from bones)

in the muddy roux of a river where carrots and celery spawn.

 

sear sweet apples in butter, knowing they deserve better,

crying their peels under my knife, for a kinder drowning in a soft wine.

 

poach blanc pears bloody, in a deep-sided pan,

in aged port, from a land never seen. but dreamed.

 

skewer tenderloin chunks, baste hems of tissue.

brush cracking fat, easy skin.

pressing, burning, intoxicating the air, spicing a bed of glowing coals.

 

thread the eye, lard the needle with pork fat, insert jowls of hogs.

scream when she could not.

breathe, see, find beneath her very own.

her skin.

her heart.

 

sew. push in the point. pulling sharp.

 

both feet against

the bed, the board.

pull the ripping twine,

of butchers, through silk veins to stitch

closed the hole, slashed.

slashed.

but blood gushes, still rushes

out, over, and down.

slipping down, crashing stairs

rising over tables, of dining.

soaking cream linens,

streaking silver cups that once runneth over with love.