Don’t They Know

By Annie Zidek

Closeted teen dyke watching Chopped season 38, episode 11

Corn-fed baby raised in the Illinois lazing in the living room
while four butch butchers beat meat on the Food Network

there they are buzzed hair and flushed cheeks hands around legs
tossing pork onto the counter slapping it for good measure

each woman thrusting her knife
above the bone through the fat into the cut

forearms dragging and pushing back and forth
loosening what’s below digging for the roast

fingers still kissing the outside moving along the skin
careful not to cut too deeply

each butcher exposing a natural seam
now there’s the piecing apart the fingers and wrists

wrestling out joints following the neck of the blade
pulling out the sirloin tip a bone excess flank

saving it for the undressing
after the cooking legs steeping in their blood

I watch from a cold leather couch thighs sticking
wanting to be eaten too braised then melting in mouth

wanting to be boned rolled and tied on sheets brown butcher’s paper
taken home under the arms of a butch

“Don’t They Know? it’s the End of tha World” (2020)

After Christina Quarles

I press my face to yours we sweat like farm fresh butter
thawing in the Dutch dish on the kitchen counter

softening taking the shape of our container we spread out
in your childhood room soon faceless

dripping while we soften into each other
into the sounds of your mother puttering down in the kitchen

your ribs sound like her pots and pans empty and stacking falling into mine
our toes lose shape rattle collect in the folds of the sheets

at some point we look like shapes of meat the things we ate for dinner
bovine bowls the cows I drove past back home

blurred families huddled under Midwest sun downs
shrinking and expanding from the car we are all pulmonary things

reduced to colors drooling into each other cud spit out
chewed up again while our bones moo and groan dragging along

when the morning light slips through the window grills the papery curtains
we are everywhere we shake out the sheets

I confuse your arms for mine you confuse my feet for yours
I put you on take your shape wear you all day

Mildly Uncomfortable