Poetic Divination
“Knives, or the Way to a Man’s Heart” by Jay C. Davis
It’s been a great couple of weeks for staying
home and sharpening my knives,
and each one has a perfect edge now.
All this honing has really whetted my appetite.
I feel a keen hunger, for freshly
chopped and diced and
julienned and sliced and
shoestringed and French cut and
coarsely chopped and minced
meat and vegetables,
filets of fish and beef and chicken,
carrots, celery, blanched broccoli and
fresh onions, garlic, peppers–sweet and hot–
strawberries, peaches, all the tropical fruits,
parsley, thyme, rosemary and
every variety of fresh herbs.
Strop, strop, chop chop.
If you open a box and drop in
100 mice with one piece of cheese
and one small hole to escape,
and wait for the scratching to stop,
one mouse only will exit the hole,
cleaning his claws against his glossy coat,
grinning in the spotlight, mugging
for the paparazzi and nibbling his cheese.
Sociologists will call him alpha,
and Psychologists will call him self-actualized,
and Calvinists will call him resolute and pious.
Dieticians say he’s non-lactose-intolerant,
and I suppose Political Scientists will call him the Voters’ Mandate.
Gamblers will call him Lucky,
and what I’ll call him is the Capitalist.
The experiment will come to an end
and the glorious multi-nominal mouse
will have his head snipped off
and disposed of by a blonde lab technician
with sterile rubber coated fingers,
who’s interning for the summer
and hates this part of her job the most
and just looks forward to going home,
where her boyfriend will be precisely now
starting to prepare a special dinner
for the two of them–
vegetables and meat,
knives flashing, water steaming,
and oil searing in the pots and pans,
in the kitchen that’s every bit as hot as Hell.