I was once a woman who drank with men
(Many women drink with men)
Their ghosts roam fitfully afterwards
Or else they’re found by the Chancellor and taken here, to the Farmhouse
This is the birth of tragedy,
Of absolute chaos, total darkness, and complete disaster
This is the invention of processed meat
I will myself someday
Be processed meat; I eat too poorly to be fit for anything else
Protein bars and very little water, toast with the bad kind of peanut butter
Our fridge is stacked with placentas in vacuum-sealed bags
I travel painfully up and down the worn black stairs; we all do
We want a chorus;
We crave a refrain
Outside it’s late fall:
Wet ground, folded grass, wormy apples
For fun I stand in front of a projection of waves crashing over and over
We carve salad bowls out of fallen oaks and sell them at the farmer’s
market in Town
In the morning we line up for the bathroom, silent and morose, some
of us struggling
With hangovers made so much worse by our pregnancies
The Chancellor claims that the dogs will hurl themselves
Through the bay windows
To protect us