Janine Certo is an associate professor at Michigan State University. Her poems have been published in a number of journals, magazines, and anthologies including Burningword Literary Journal, Ilya’s Honey, The Endicott Review, and Muddy River Poetry Review. Among her awards are a Lilly Fellowship and a grant from the Spencer Foundation. She is at work on her first poetry collection. She lives with her husband and dog in East Lansing MI. Visit her website.

Eating Pork Ribs With You
By Janine Certo

Your head tilts left and right eyeing
the fleshiest part. The meatiest
bone comes to your mouth, turning
on your rotisserie fingers. A child
with a sucker, chomping the knobby

ends. I used to dream what you would
be like. Made out candlelight, heard
the clink of glasses, saw eyes locked
between bites of some French meal
with very tiny vegetables. But tonight

you are the Komodo Dragon who eats
all its weight in a single meal, who
rips apart, downs all of its kill: hoofs,
hides, intestines and stomach. I marvel
your clean bones, while I negotiate

fat, cartilage, gristle and veins, grease
now on the corners of your mouth.
I know what love is: I let you eat each
rib without comment, let you work them
bare as if they’ve been boiled, let you

stack the little bones like kindling
in a fire, hell, I’d let you thread them
into a necklace, each bone clinking
down on the others, spread wide across
your heart, as you smile that sticky smile.