On Wednesdays, we amble
Into the room constructed with femurs and
Packed to the roof with the smell of flesh.
Our fingernails are scalpels; these blades do the licking on the tongues of Mr. Brendan's dogs,
Dead as doornails, he always says,
Wiping crimson laughter off on the sleeves of another stained afternoon.

A little old woman once told us,
You are all devils - you are all going to hell!
She spoke with such fierce conviction; caps-locked HELL! now
Dangle from our earlobes, strung
By the protruding veins of all the bald supervisors we ever had.
But perhaps,
If she could see Mr. Brendan's dogs as they lie
Silent, with unclean eyes of opal and cream
Under our glad-wrapped palms and microscope eyes,
She would be more understanding.

We take out their hearts, these dogs with markings like Tasmanian tigers -
They won't need them anymore,
Nor their limbs, lungs, lymph nodes.
Mr. Brendan weaves among us, calling us virgins,
His hair combed back like stainless steel, possessed by the Time Master,
Brandishing battle marks from severed vessels:
The Green Dream, ladies and gentlemen,
If only it was that easy for us all!

The redness drains from his face
Into the bodies of his dogs,
Dead on another Wednesday afternoon.