--for Selah
Ann Saterstrom
“I saw you, sister, standing in this brilliance.”
--Paul
Celan
Seeking potential conversations with the dead in grocery
stores? Lacking the respect of a
churchyard, stacks of chopped bodies wrapped in plastic and styrofoam, stamped
with dates and prices, the refrigerator is not the grave the human stomach is
the grave. Grocery store refrigerators
are like any morgue awaiting someone to claim the body. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and
listen. There is a particular and very
noticeable chatter beneath the clear plastic shrouds, making the listener enter
a quiet, cold meditation. Stand before
the hacked animal joints, stomach and shoulder fat, and cut the tarot deck nine
times, then read the cards.
Memories stored in flesh all flesh all humans and other
animals on the prairie, by the bay, in the city, or incarcerated in prisons or
zoos (which are prisons built to amuse children and their nescient
parents). Memories of joy and suffering,
anyone who has received extensive massage or acupuncture knows the body can
release feelings long secluded in muscle and other tissue. It’s a glorious thing such freedom. Give this to grocery store animals with their
fur ripped away, their tongues removed, their bones cracked and sawed from
ligaments. Pull the cards, pull them,
see how they walked and felt the touch of sunlight. Unfetter a bit of the pain. One, two, three cards pulled for chops,
roasts, and hamburger patties. Take
notes about love you have known for those who were shown none. Notes from taroting at the display of
conformist serial killing will become a poem, another communiqué, one for
humans loosening their impediments of ignorance of suffering.
