In the market, a transaction
is made, and the snake is lifted
from the basket by the back
of its head, the black body dangling
like a girl's braid. With a flash
of silver the head is scissored off
into a Tupperware and the skin
peeled down like a condom, like the arm
of a wet shirt, the slick inner
muscle exposed and thrown
to the counter like a party ribbon.

Now the animal is pure meat,
the long chords pulled apart
from the spine, a broken zipper.
The customer, he wants only
the liver, the size of a lover's earlobe,
said to improve brain function,
to replace lost memory.
Memory can become a medicine that,
clamped beneath the tongue, heals
all past and recent conflagrations.
But scars are the prisons skin builds
around injury, the angle of the roof
increasing as each blade is drawn in
and out. And memory is the room
where you wait in the dark.

You still had your key. You heard
my footstep on the landing, the tumblers
rolling in the lock. You sat like a priest
at the edge of the sofa, your clothes
the color of earth and organs, like an animal
caught at the roadside, you wanted
to catch me with a new lover,
my nylons already shed limp in my
hand, returning at three A.M.