They Cut the Same, You Know

I got this line prompt from Tiel Anisha Ansari’s post on Poetry Thursday. Out of all the lines left, and there were a lot of good ones, this one spoke to me the most. I was able to almost immediately envision what I wanted to do with it.

I work at a culinary college teaching English & Literature, which can be invigorating or maddening, depending on how willing my students are to step outside of themselves. This poem is directly influenced by that experience, hence the knives and meat.

I was very pleased to find, after I wrote this poem of course, that the original author’s poem “Knives of Sorrow, Knives of Joy” also contain knife imagery. Great minds…

Primals

Most mornings, my students stand
at chrome tables, watching
an instructor lecture on primal
cuts of meat. Cold

carcasses lie before them,
white lines of fat glistening
against a field of blue, pink
and red. Knives in hand,

they go to work,
gently carving flesh from bone,
separating the choice
portions of meat from the gristle,

tenderloin, eye round,
flank and blade.
In my class, they slump in seats,
exhausted. I show them

a language, whole,
before slicing it into sections,
subject, verb, predicate,
modifier. Together,

we carve away,
removing the unsavory,
the spoiled, the over or under
used musculature of their words.

Their eyes glaze over, milky pools
of white. They say
they’re tired, they don’t understand.
They wield knives and I

wield words. I tell them,
they cut the same, you know.