Like Lambs

In a like spirit, especially if a daughter
will scrape the ground meat from a pita
and her parents despair over the lost
iron, seeping now monthly from her blood,
replaced by nothing that has ever held
iron, the mother, acting on nothing more
than an old fascination with lifting scabs
from her own body, may take something sharp,
and, where even the gynecologist will not
notice, will drain her own blood
into a red soup. Like lambs, she invents, holy lambs,
no desert to be strung out into, whole
or half, surrendered to the spirit market
however the buyer prefers it, with beans,
with lovely blooming vegetables, eaten
hoof and nipple, sucked marrow out.