Vanitas

Victoria Nordlund

After Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox

“There is this great beauty of the colour of meat...”  —Francis Bacon


I
A gutted carcass hangs—
Crucified in a wooden shed,
suspended by two rear legs, 
tied by ropes 
to a wooden crossbeam,
decapitated and flayed of skin and hair, 
chest stretched open,
organs removed—
A stilled life of flesh and fat and joints and bones. 

II
The white-capped woman peers at me
through the shadows of a half-open door,
clutches her maroon belly,
creates a narrative of
blood that’s yet to bleed,
of hands that hold 
rust pigment in their pores,
of a darkening meat
not yet cut—

 
 
 

about the writer

Headshot (1).jpeg

Victoria Nordlund is the creative writing director at Rockville High School in Vernon, CT, an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut, and a lead master teaching artist at The Mark Twain House. Her poetry collections Wine-Dark Sea and Binge Watching Winter on Mute are published by Main Street Rag. A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, her work has appeared in PANK Magazine, Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, Pidgeonholes, and other journals. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com