Written by Sharon Israel
I worked in my father’s butcher shop only once. Scooped shiny brains into plastic bags. Arranged them carefully like pale jewels in the glass-fronted display case, a Snow White coffin filled with orderly chickens, beef livers, loins and an eyeless lamb’s head – so quiet. My father didn’t want me near his twitchy smell, stained fingers and red-rimmed half-mooned nails, sharpened grey carving knifes, sawdust, formica walls with their pink-blood wash. He didn’t want me to see him sweat as he hooked carcasses to a refrigerated ceiling. First published in Voice Lesson (2017) by Post Traumatic Press
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Sharon Israel is a Sephardic-American poet. Her debut chapbook Voice Lesson was published in 2017 by Post Traumatic Press. She was an early recipient of Brooklyn College’s Leonard B. Hecht Poetry Explication Award, was nominated for “Best of the Net” in 2016 and won Four Lines’ 2020 winter poetry challenge. Sharon’s work has most recently appeared in Flatbush Review, the Orchard Lea Press anthology Close Up: Poems on Cancer, Grief, Hope and Healing and Discretionary Love. Sharon hosts the radio show and podcast, Planet Poet-Words in Space, on WIOX 91.3 FM in the Catskills and streaming on WIOXradio.org. All podcast episodes are available on Google, Spotify and Apple. Visit Sharon’s website Sharonisraelpoet.com or click on https://linktr.ee/sharonisraelpoet for more information. Sharon lives with her husband in Roxbury, NY in the Catskills.