There's a firmness, a near violence, with which you chop vegetables, at odds

      with your nature, but maybe I'm deluding myself. Is that my head on the

    block and are you a modern day Madame Defarge transmitting

  secret signals to forces out to usurp me? The vegetables,

          sized down, are scraped into a steel bowl large

                     enough to show your determined

                 reflection. It's probably how 

      they emptied the baskets

            in the Place dé la

                    Revolution.

My move away from meat might end stickily.

A native of Ireland and a lapsed neurologist, Ivo Drury lives along the California Coast. Poetry published recently featured in Red Eft Review, Rockvale Review, Trouvaille Review and Schuylkill Valley Journal.