Happy Friday, friends! Hope you had a nice week. I’ve been sitting in the yard a good bit enjoying the early, rainy spring.

Today’s NaPoWriMo prompt: Inspired by the poem, “Treasure Hunt” by Prabodh Parikh, write a poem in which a profession or vocation is described differently than it typically is considered to be.

I chose to write about the start of a shift for a vegetarian butcher. Stay tuned to see if I one day pursue the other idea I had for this prompt — a window-washer who is desperately afraid of heights.

The butcher

She stows her cobb salad
in the empty break room
fridge before

she rolls down her sleeves
to stroll between the 
hanging rations.

She unhooks one — still
a cow to her, now beef 
to the world —

she carves new meaning
from a slab: rib, brisket
chuck and plate.

She packages bloody cuts,
protected in brown paper,
crisp folds,

then drops her steel
blade into the sink
like a lazy killer.