“Rabbit Pâté,” by Jennifer Funk (Poetry ’16)

“Rabbit Pâté,” a poem by 2016 alum Jennifer Funk, was recently featured in Painted Bride Quarterly. Read an excerpt below:

Rabbit Pâté

It arrived this afternoon swaddled in plastic wrap and packed in ice, already beheaded
and de-furred, lustrous and pale.  Both creatures ready, the counter sanitized and clear,
Chef takes animal apart, parting limbs from torso with practiced hands

and a paring knife, shearing burgundy muscle loose from bone, his wrist loosening
tissue with swift flicks.  His frame mounts a shadow over the once-a-rabbit, the getting
comes easy, his synapses discharging from the memory grove: brain to bicep

to wrist to knife’s edge.  He stills, holds the heart a beat.  This heart, a rough
nugget of muscle, the size of a walnut…

 

Read the rest of this poem here: http://pbqmag.org/jennifer-funk-rabbit-pate/