Offal Awful Offal

(Byron Babcock didn’t come home) flank-steak, ox-tail and wild mutton, kidneys and cock’s tongue, the gore and sluice from the slaughterhouse floor, his eyes watery with the stench and boil. ‘Mama I’m going to be sick’. ‘Enough’ she’d hiss ‘enough of your stupid tricks, now eat!’ His wife stole his Pope’s Miter, then his left shoe then his right, and then pretended she hadn’t stolen anything at all (pintsize calf’s testicles whipped with heavy cream and fennel). The man in the hat dreamt he was dreaming, and in that dream dreamt he was awake. Food plays tricks on (pintsize calf’s testicles whipped with heavy cream and fennel) an empty stomach. Words become images of food and emptiness, a Pope’s Miter, chickens plucked featherless, guinea partridge poached to a gray offal mottle, ‘enough of your stupid tricks, now eat!’ The emptiness plays tricks on wild turkeys, gore-tipped shoes swish-swishing across the top of the slaughterhouse floor. Nothing is what it seems, ever. The man in the hat dreamt he was dreaming, and in that dream dreamt he was awake (all that offal awful, sluice-gate bilge, all that awful offal swirling down the drainpipe maw).