THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER

THE BUTCHER’S DAUGHTER

The butcher’s daughter was the cutest lady I’d ever known.
But... she was another man’s wife, some child’s mom and another generation.

I met her doppleganger, once; deep in the culverts of Minneapolis.
I sang her to my house and deep-fried baby trouts for her, which she ate like flaming popcorn.
She only stayed three days, but promised to meet me again...

Only later... did I begin to remember.

I washed her hair, once; in the torrent of a glacial waterfall.
The ice was two kilometres high and had just finished grinding up all the fossils in Northwestern Ontario.
We dried ourselves on a fresh, sterile esker; then, dined on frozen mammoth, sticking out of the ice-wall.
Mammoth tastes like freezer burn.


I rode in a trireme with her, some time ago.
I brought plague to her city, but she loved me. She smuggled me inside the walls and 60% of the adults died, in the next three months.
Children were immune.

I speared the last Sasquatch for her; she rewarded me with her favours, after we feasted.
The trees surrounded us, glaring in disapproval; horrified.
The fire was two stories high, in sixty-foot wide clearing.

The grass was thick, soft and soothing-green.
Sasquatch tastes like thylacine.

The butcher’s daughter was the cutest lady I’d ever known... But; she was another man’s wife, some child’s mom and social aberration..

I took the painted rocks lining the driveway of abandoned summer lodges (quite cheerful once the dirt of decade’s neglect is washed off) and made her a necklace.
It was linked with 1 Gauge, welded, high-carbon steel.
It weighed more than that ol’ mammoth and all his parasites put together.
She only wore it once...
There went another summer.

I escorted her down the street, one afternoon:
she wore a plaid catholic-school uniform mini skirt.
Her face... painted white; she wore purple black lipstick and flaming eyeshadow.
She looked molten hot.
I couldn’t compete with that, but...

I wore my most obnoxiously cheerful tie-dye t-shirt and the largest plastic beads I’d stolen from someone else’s Mardi-Gras collection.

We were thousands of years old and she still made me nervous... distracted; overjoyed to be alive.

The stares of men were full of wonder, then HATE.

After washing off the grease of last night’s labours, my hands feel curiously tacky.
It is, as if, they’ve been stripped of a smooth and frictionless sheen.

The water is cold, cold, cold... in the shop tonight.
There is no hot water.
It’s freezing... but, feels like life, itself, pouring out of the tap.
I’ve been working on her monument all night and there is granite dust, ozone...
blood and soot in my hair, my teeth.

I want to believe
we’ll meet again.

The butcher’s daughter was the cutest lady I’d ever known... But; she was another man’s wife, some child’s mom and my heart's lamentation.

I’ve heard about a ship to the underworld, owned by a guide who works for meat.
The blood on my knuckles; my down payment.

Audioblogger posting of this poem.

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