Bone

The way the sprawled dog gnawed
a T-bone all day, tugging gristle, grinding
at a marbly spur, shellacking fissures
with her long, loving tongue — her passion

staring at the floorboards
as at a vision of marrow, the way
her ears bounced when she raked a groove,
her mouth straining down

in an ecstatic grimace — the fact
she was manic with little more
than the idea of meat, its memory,
a greasy trace in a crack, a gnarled

fleck on a nub — her deep love for it,
her belief in it, like a theory one gives
one’s life to without adding the costs:
rabbits unchased, holes

not dug. The way she lay back discarded like some lacy underthing
on the bordello floor of her lustings:

that’s how you and I should live.