Filling For Pies

Life in a meat locker. Cold cuts of beef.
Bloodless and headless. Ripe for the knife.
Sawdust on flagstones. Kidneys in trays. Grief
stays not the butcher’s hand, nor wakes his wife.

Limbs under strip-lights, tinting them red. Bones
leaking marrow. Tripe gleaming white. Pig’s head
and trotters, boiled down to brawn. As he hones
his blade, she moans in her sleep. Their cold bed

is childless. Their child’s grave is cold. Flowers,
once purple as entrails, now bloom crisp brown
as crackling. Each swing of his axe chops hours
into steaks. There are stains on her nightgown

she will not wash out. His coat is spotless.
He mops up the drips. None fall from his eyes.
Her heart is mere offal. He is gutless
or gutted. His only filling for pies.