United States, (contemporary)
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.
Hereafter. Portland: Quiet Lion Press, 1999.
Editor’s Note:
Some of Jeff’s poems are also available thru Gumball Poetry, a non-profit literary web magazine that publishes the best poetry it can get a hold of onto the web and by carefully placing it into capsules sold in gumball machines — that’s right, a machine full of delicious gum-chewing bubble-bursting poetry: www.gumballpoetry.com/.
About the Poet
Jeff Meyers US poet, born in Miami, grew up in New York and currently resides in Portland. He works as a poet, writer, theater director and actor, by night and a Cardiology Research Assistant by day. In 1996 he hosted and produced The National Poetry Slam, featured in the documentary, “Slamnation.”
Jeff is a co-founder, in 1997, of the critically acclaimed and award-winning theater company, Portland’s Theatre Vertigo, and is currently the artistic director for StageDirect. [DES-6/03]