The meat lay
flat and limpid
on the kitchen counter top
as we talked about which
receipt, unscrewed the cork
until it popped.

Then I used the wooden hammer,
beat the meat ’till it was tender
while you heated up the oven,
slowly opened up the door…

It was gleeful bang-bang
banging with the hammer
on the meat,
the oven growing hotter,
the kitchen shared the heat.
Soon our salivating hunger
was more than we could stand
so we seared the meat,
then laid it and ate it
on the table
with our fingers, our teeth, our tongues