To say it is to taste a kiss given form:
mmmeat. With that last ‘t’, a stutter of love, although
‘love’ isn’t a word to make the heart ripe

like ‘meat’ is. Enough to leave us Bedlam-bound,
meat is a minor catastrophe, as anticipated
and warmly welcome as sleep, leaving us not shamed

but with a mind to be efficient in our grazing.
When the oven is on or the pan in a frenzy,
something in the drab, bitter day is lifted –

that torpor kneading the forebrain lightened
by a single siliqua. Ill as we are with tenderness,
the crackling of glazed meat, its yielding to force

is a matter to contend for. Brazenly, meat cribs
its taste from conquest and trembling, rouses
the savage in us like a drum and tuba concerto.

Meat, dark placebo, ardent in your redness –
we call you humdrum incendiary and slender hulk,
but gaze you to a smut, to needle our hunger.

Rogue schematic and supple anchor, I zombify
in your presence, gnawing you neatly apart, ridged
with teeth. Now, sweet cargo, attend to me.