Poet of the Month: ‘Spoiled Meat’ by Nicole Santalucia

It’s okay to dig your grandmother
out of her grave then chop wood
and sit on a log that floats
down the Susquehanna River.
It’s okay to stand in mud and pray
to an empty grave,
to call your brother and leave
a message and to never go
looking for him. It’s okay
to spend all of the inheritance money
on the idea of forgiveness
by burying it in the backyard
then digging it up to take all of the quarters
for laundry then forgetting to go to the laundromat.
It’s okay that this happened,
that your legacy ends
with a fistful of loose change.

But it’s not okay that the butcher
at the grocery store dips spoiled
loins and shanks and T-bones
in blood to boost America’s courage.
Grocery boys and cash and imported cheese
and cans of crushed tomatoes—all dipped
in blood. Maybe all those red lips
in the photos of our grandmothers
are fresh blood and the shadows
rotten meat.

Nicole Santalucia is the author of Because I Did Not Die (Bordighera Press, 2015) and Spoiled Meat (Headmistress Press, 2018). She is a recipient of the Charlotte Mew Chapbook Prize and the Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize.  Her non-fiction and poetry have appeared in publications such as The Cincinnati Review, TINGE, Zócalo Public Square, The Seventh Wave, Bayou Magazine, Gertrude, Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment, The Boiler Journal as well as numerous other journals. Santalucia teaches at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania and has taught poetry workshops in the Cumberland County Prison, Shippensburg Public Library, Boys & Girls Club, and nursing homes.