The Vet Wife’s Refrigerator

A scream from the kitchen. The thud of a faint.

            She sighs and arises and walks with restraint.

Her neighbor lays peaceful, eyes fixed in a stare

            She’s passed out in front of the new Frigidaire.

She looks at the rack with eggs in its keep

Winking up at her’s the eye of a sheep.

There’s a bottle of PenStrep near the Swanson’s Pot Pies

            And down in the crisper’s a bagful of flies.

The butter tray’s filled with test tubes of blood

            Marked, ‘E.I.A. samples, from Tucker’s old stud.’

High on the shelf near a platter of cheese

            is a knotted, but leaking, obscene plastic sleeve.

Fecal containers are stacked, side by side,

            With yesterday’s piece of chicken, home fried.

The freezer’s a dither of guts, lungs and spleens

            Scattered amongst the Birds Eye green beans.

Her home’s a museum of animal parts.

            Lymphomatous lymph nodes, selenium hearts.

Enough tissue samples to hold up a bridge

            But why do they always end up in the fridge?

But she doesn’t worry or turn up her nose,

            She’s the wife of a vet, it’s the life that she chose.

But maybe he’d worry at lunch if he knew

            He might just be dining on Whirl-Pack stew!

Baxter Black is a cowboy poet, former large-animal veterinarian and entertainer of the agricultural masses. Learn more at www.baxterblack.com.