Poetry: Brief History of Meat by Rachel Mindell
Rachel Mindell explores the suggestive power of meat here—plugging the poem in to a word, an image, an experience as basic and ancient as breathing. “This is eating,” the poem declares with a wink—because it’s more than that. Just look at the skulls. Hear the mouths singing, full of meat and bone.
Brief History of Meat
No bone means more easily enjoyed.
Arpeggio finds the mouth as you sing it.
That a stamp pressed upon you should stay.
Hands cramp when gods stop driving.
That parchment inside us should shred.
No one to tell the skull of my arm
from the celery I’m high off. Hunger.
Egg on a spoon, an egg all right
not being an apple or a tablet or a toy.
This is eating. Enough taste on my tongue
for us both and to savor it, which is song.
If we bit here we’d be home by now.
Rachel Mindell
Rachel Mindell lives in Tucson, Arizona. She is the author of two chapbooks: Like a Teardrop and a Bullet (Dancing Girl Press) and rib and instep: honey (above/ground). Individual poems have appeared (or will) in DIAGRAM, Bombay Gin, BOAAT, Forklift, Ohio, Glass Poetry, The Journal, Sundog Lit, Tammy, and elsewhere. She works for Submittable.
