that is the downtown mall, and enters
a cookery store to look for an inexpensive
dutch oven wherein he might attempt to recreate
his mother’s boeuf bourguignon recipe, slow-
simmered and rich with the flavor of beef
braised in red wine, caramelized onions,
garlic, bacon, mushrooms, and a bouquet
garni. Looking through a shelf of enamel-
glazed French cast iron casseroles and
surreptitiously fingering the three-digit
price tags, he is hailed by a sales clerk
with a bountiful head of curls. Her name
tag reads “Artemis,” and she offers
little paper cup samples of flavored coffee
brewed from individual pods dropped in a chrome-
fitted machine vaguely resembling a tabletop
silo. He restrains himself from asking
where her hunting dogs are, and her fierce
handmaidens; and how it has come to pass
that she has wound up in this sad position
instead of calling the shots in the glade,
ordering a wall of bristling spears raised
around the sacred pool in which she bathes…
Instead he bows and takes the proffered sip,
thanks her, and decides: rather than meat,
he will have something raw and fresh
for dinner— perhaps a salad of greens
with slices of crisp, tart fruit;
nothing animal that might have writhed
in the agony of the chase before the kill.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
