Ogresse
-after “L’Ogresse” by Françoise Pétrovitch
If I have closed my eyes to your wanton ones, I hope you won’t mistake my mouth: I ate him. Every raging morsel and with a blunt knife, too. (I’ve only been given so many tools.) All the same I had method. First, I went in through the kisser, propped open his great jaw and pulled out his tongue from the stone of his head. (If you’re going to do away with a monster, you must first empty its trap.) Like a slug it writhed until I split it with my teeth, the nerves of him charging down my throat like a herd. Then, I punched through his throat to the trove of tendons that cage the larynx. (To do away with a monster, you have to change the tune of what he left.) I wanted to strum him, to make him expel a sad sound. So, I did, and he did. (We’re never too full up on melancholy.) There was other music in him, too. I tapped his knees until they issued a more youthful bellow, and as I plucked his toes biggest to smallest, the plinks they made told a lullaby. (Of course, to free us, I had to retrieve the baby-baby within the man-baby.) Truth be told, most of him tasted rather moldy, and I’d barely gotten through his muscles when I saw, right before my very eyes, his tibia and fibula turn from beige to brown. Still, I didn’t miss a note in him, even if all the ribs did was jangle. There’s so much to fine tune in the misconducted concert of life. Anyway, he’s all fixed up now. He’s all taken care of. I hope you won’t mistake my mouth: I did it.