Lynn Domina is the author of Corporal Works which won the Four Way Books competition in 1998. She is currently completing a book of poems based on the work of the painter Edward Hicks and the idea that the lion would lie down with the lamb in the Peaceable Kingdom.

Little Lambs Eat Ivy

Boneless or semi-boned leg, chops, crown
of lamb, tenderly seeping juice
onto an ivory platter -- perhaps we carnivores
who devour herbivores nourish ourselves
unfairly. I would happily sample
rattlesnake, crawfish, wild boar, ostrich
without distinction. Jesus,
after all, ate meat, even if
his biographers emphasize only bread
and wine. Mid-days, he likely sucked marrow
from femur and tibia and chewed
gristle at his leisure. I approached forty
before savoring my first bite -- from the loin,
I remember -- but now hunt hungrily
at supermarkets and butcher shops as I imagine
Eve ever after insisted
they swing by fruit stands to fork over
her husband's sweat-earned wages for a peck
of MacIntosh, a bushel of Braeburn.
That first soft sweet flavor --
how it lingers, like sin, almost
like salvation.