"Not Food" by Elaine Smokewood read by Kristina Brooks
Channel: Remembering Dr. Elaine Smokewood, Poet and Teacher
Date: 2014-11-25

Not Food by Elaine Smokewood

The wife takes the thief to her jewelry chest, dangles
a rare pearl. She exchanges a glance with her husband,

who's been playing thus far in the drama the role of frail
and frightened fool. Both know where the gun is kept,

know the thief does not know whose bolt he's broken.
The thief drops his knife, fingers the pearl as if it is meat.

he will swallow, then turns to find the husband grown
large as a mountain and feel the gun-barrel resting

against his face. The husband pulls a yellow funnel
from his pocket, places it in the thief's eye as if this eye

were the hollow, hungry organ that must die. He eases
the gun in the funnel then backs the thief slowly into a closet

filled with the rags and bones of other damaged and destitute
drifters. The gun fires. In the distance, an engine roars.

An accomplice flees. "A motorcycle," the husband
says. "I'll remember the sound." "He was only hungry,"

the wife says. "Always, they are only hungry," The husband
bolts their door with the thief's severed ring finger.

"We are not food to be eaten by thieves," he says.