Saul Bennett
Just Another Cut Of Meat
In the War you got sent to the German when your mother ran out
of milk or needed an egg or two to cook hard for your little lunchbox
after the American went dark; lining up underneath their bombsight
Ja? Vot? glare, head butting the bottom of their counter glass eyeing
alien meats in a sullen rank on the othei' side: one with pus sores
a gentile friend nudged you head cheese!; gummy, crimson
bloodwursts in huge rounds; weary, Marlene Dietrich-pale hams
worthy of sighs sufficient to cloud the glass; adjacent, bobbing in brine
in a sizable chromium craft, pickles, camouflage green; standing
sentry watch behind, a squad each: junkets, custards, puddings,
brown, yellow, rose, each precisely the height of its bruder in cups
the color of paste you could keep forfeiting the five-cent deposit.
The liver-color hair of the pair of Wehrmacht-age brothers who ran it
in smart starched whites stood fixed-bayonet straight and watching them
dart, lunge, strangle requested items with pincers off high shelves,
wipe hands on starched cloths mounted at apron belts after each
fleshy slicing mission, you felt they showered every day and twice
in August, and when your order ended, backing off their glass,
as .almost nice as their dead-aim smile appeared to make them want to
appear, you feared you were being measured, for what you weren't sure.