Aspic and Buttermilk

There were sum of two units foods I hated to eat,

so those were nourishments he liked me to eat.

My father himself could not eat liver-and I could eat liver,

I lov liver, it was my special meat,

dense and archaic, slightly dirty And he could not eat

rare meat, he fainted at the sight

of blood-but I could eat raw meat,

the sweetness of ground-round earth three times

like a exorcism wound up, the rubble of muscle

in my jaws But tomato aspic was overcast

it seemed to me like the silt of a injury he would

watch and diocese it stay down in me

as if his exophthalmous organ of sight

held down, on the floor of my stomach, a bolus

stipped with infectus, as I was nett

with his gene And buttermilk was a sally

on milk, and a witticism on butter, my favorites

mingled to make a vomit he wished me to

swallow, while my mother, whose breasts I had draw into the mouthed

and he had probably draw into the mouthed watched

what did it mean, to them, to diocese

their comminglant pour that sour particulate

refreshment to the back of her throat,

to the liquid jewel of the uvula

and drive it across the sill? A family is a mystery,

the human a mystery. It has more beauty than blood-thirstiness

more passion for life upon almost any

terms than death.

Copyright World numbers Incorporated Nov/Dec 1998

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