I don’t eat
anything with a face,
the young woman declares,
her broad skull
looming so close to mine that I don’t
resist wondering at both tender pouches
below her eyes, the sweet fold
of flesh along her neck, though later
I imagine most faces
consist only in so much gristle.

 

Oysters breathe without faces, and ingest
and likely communicate
as do ghoulish octopi and lobster
scuttling across the sea floor, grasping rock,
clams, frantic minnows. My palate rejects
slimy creatures, some crustaceans,
cephalopods, but relishes shrimp
I purchase headless and de-veined.
Shrimp are non-sentient beings, a man
assured me once, explaining his ethics
of eating. Cocktail sauce dribbled
up his thumb, undoubtedly a delicacy,
marinated, in some cultures.

 

Chicken, whose breasts I eat most, peck stones
and corn as if their struts and jerks do not
further mar their indelicate appearance.
What is the ugliest
animal — subway rat? hammerhead shark?
vampire bat? I’ve eaten none
of those faces. Tonight, my child
bangs about the kitchen. Rinsing a five-pound fryer,
she winces and says it feels like
a dead baby. A dead premature baby,
I specify, verifying
the opinion of some who doubt
my maternal instincts. But I know
supper will taste delicious, the crisp skin, moist white meat,
even my own hands as I lick
glistening grease from index finger, pinkie,
plump thumb.