There is a way if we want into everything
I'll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the small and glowing
loaves of bread
I'll eat the waiter, the waitress floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks like water at night The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese poems You eat the forks all the knives, asleep and waiting on the white tables What do you love? I love the way our teeth stay long after we're gone, hanging on despite worms or fire I love our stomachs turning over the earth
From The End of the West by Michael Dickman. Copyright © 2009 by Michael Dickman. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.