Working with Florenz on both Kazimierz Square and BEAR was always rich and fun and always straightforward. We had a tradition that she would always sign her emails and I would always address emails to her with a funny version of her name: Fiori, Firenza, Firenze, Fiorentina, F, Flora, Florentian, Florenzina, Flor — you get the idea. What a wonderful human being.
-Karen Chase
Venison
from Kazimierz Square
Paul set the bags down, told how they had split
the deer apart, the ease of peeling it
simpler than skinning a fruit, how the buck
lay on the worktable, how they sawed
an anklebone off, the smell not rank.
The sun slipped into night.
Where are you I wondered as I grubbed
through cupboards for noodles at least.
Then came venison new with blood,
stray hair from the animal’s fur.
Excited, we cooked the meat.
Later, I dreamt against your human chest,
you cloaked me in your large arms, then
went for me the way you squander food sometimes.
By then, I was eating limbs in my sleep, somewhere
in the snow alone, survivor of a downed plane,
picking at the freshly dead. Whistles
of a far off flute — legs, gristle, juice.
I cracked an elbow against a rock, awoke.
Throughout the night, we consumed and consumed.
