Flat Sincerity

They often walk through the door of the butcher shop.

Women who eat off the fat of their husband’s presence

With hair so straightened they look like porn starlets.

“She brought upon me so much heaviness,

With the affright that from her aspect came,” *

I hear the voice echo from a soulless cave

As I trim some fat off a ribeye steak.

Around me lie dissected and disassociated carcasses.

Gray fish guts,

Opaque trims of gristle,

And pink-stained fat trims fill the trash.

Red liquid drips from a lifeless, hanging eviscerated pig.

The blood on the sharp knives reminding me of the ochre shades of hell.

They walk to the counter with faces of flat sincerity

Asking Ernesto or Bart or Danny,

“Is the salmon sushi grade today?”

When I hear that I think that what they need is a righteous loving fuck.

The ones that they don’t even know exist.

I’ll take my 10 now,

Go out and sit on a milk crate

Near the piss-scented corner of the parking lot,

And make more plans on how to keep my desperation invisible

• Dante’s Inferno