Meyers, Jeff

United States, (contemporary)

Gristle

  1. I steal back the half-chewed pig’s ear
  2. from my dog’s mouth and with needle
  3. and dental floss, I sew it into
  4. the mattress on my wife’s side of the bed.
  5.  
  6. She mumbles in her sleep
  7. and, though sometimes
  8. it is the only noise in the house,
  9. I cannot understand her.
  10.  
  11. There are slow, breathless statements that leak
  12. from her darkened body. They wheeze with truth.
  13. Of this, I am sure.
  14.  
  15. For weeks and weeks I have lain beside her,
  16. pressing my fingers into my forehead, believing
  17. that if I could concentrate hard enough
  18. I might learn what it is she knows before she wakes.
  19.  
  20. Tonight, somewhere, a deafened pig
  21. will discover all my wife’s secrets.
  22.  
  23. Tomorrow I will find him
  24. and eat meat for the first time in seventeen years.

© Jeff Meyers
Hereafter. Portland: Quiet Lion Press, 1999.

Editor’s Note:

Some of Jeff’s poems are also available thru Gumball Poetry, a non-profit literary web magazine that publishes the best poetry it can get a hold of onto the web and by carefully placing it into capsules sold in gumball machines — that’s right, a machine full of delicious gum-chewing bubble-bursting poetry: www.gumballpoetry.com/.

About the Poet

Jeff Meyers US poet, born in Miami, grew up in New York and currently resides in Portland. He works as a poet, writer, theater director and actor, by night and a Cardiology Research Assistant by day. In 1996 he hosted and produced The National Poetry Slam, featured in the documentary, “Slamnation.”

Jeff is a co-founder, in 1997, of the critically acclaimed and award-winning theater company, Portland’s Theatre Vertigo, and is currently the artistic director for StageDirect. [DES-6/03]

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