Jeff Meyers
Gristle
I steal back the half-chewed pig's ear
from my dog's mouth and with needle
and dental floss, I sew it into
the mattress on my wife's side of the bed.
She mumbles in her sleep
and, though sometimes
it is the only noise in the house,
I cannot understand her.
There are slow, breathless statements that leak
from her darkened body. They wheeze with truth.
Of this, I am sure.
For weeks and weeks I have lain beside her,
pressing my fingers into my forehead, believing
that if I could concentrate hard enough
I might learn what it is she knows before she wakes.
Tonight, somewhere, a deafened pig
will discover all my wife's secrets.
Tomorrow I will find him
and eat meat for the first time in seventeen years.
Gristle was originally published in Jeff Meyers' newest book, Hereafter (Quiet Lion Press, 1999), which was a finalist for an Oregon Book Award. He has two previous collections of poems, Half Empty (Future Tense Books, 1995) and Come Over Here And Leave Me Alone (Pandemonium Press, 1997). He works as a writer, theater director, actor, and medical research assistant in Portland, Oregon.
See Jeff's poem Jogging While U-Haul also this issue.
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