Carniv(ore)

My father picks his teeth,
lower lip glistening pink
like a cow’s cut throat.

     Meat threaded
     between his incisors,
     I can smell the hide draped
     around his neck,
     the cow’s spine like a crown still
     saliva-dripping.

     He wipes his mouth, blood
     dries in his hands’ ridges,
     his greased smile like a chipped brick.

     I cut open his stomach
     and pull the cow out—

His insides stinking like metal.
His metal face sweating,
his metal breath,
his lower lip glistening gray and hot
like a freshly polished pipe.

— 2011