Engorged / Mutually Assured

"I want to desire you and make you fear me"

Editors’ note: Today’s MEAT edition is particularly exciting as it marks the first time that we have published poetry as part of FFJ! Here we bring you two poems. The bold and talented voices of A.J. Parker and Natasha Matsaert probe the nexus of gender-meat-consumption with visceral acuity, unearthing unhealed wounds and unresolved tensions of expectation, performance, control, and desire. We’d love to hear what you think. — IV & ZJ

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Engorged

By A.J. Parker | Listen to an audio reading of this poem by A.J. below.

Illustration by Zoë Johnson.

To be what they want, 
you will have to shave off the excess, 
strip down to the last semblance 
of self-preservation you had, 
eat the meat raw like a rabid dog. 

You will have to drink your own blood 
to make sure it still tastes like the other’s. 

You will have to say something old 
in a new way, in a sexy way, 
in a young and plump way. 
 
You will have to sandpaper the scars 
until they’re smooth and don’t scare anybody, 
cut the fat until you’re chewable again. 

You will have to look at yourself 
in the knife’s reflection and ask  
am I what they want to see? 

Then you’ll line your tongue 
with nail polish remover 
and smile like you practiced, 
your stomach still empty 
with acidic ego and 
the last of your propane, 
but this is what you do for dreams, 
this is what you swallow for 
shame-turned-pride, 
this is what you gorge yourself on when 
you remember the girl you used to be 
before you became the girl they made you to be, 
this is the bone you choke on 
when no one is looking.

A.J. Parker is an emerging young adult writer from Phoenix, Arizona. She’s been published in Synkroniciti and Feminist Food Journal. You can follow her at @ashleyjadeparker on Instagram/Threads and @ashleyjadeparke on Twitter/X.

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Mutually Assured

By Natasha Matsaert

Illustration by Zoë Johnson.

I tell myself that tonight I will destroy you
with the form, mass, weight, certainty, capacity of my desire.
I want to desire you and make you fear me.
It is central that you view me as less human
following this colonising of form.
You will feel the need to trap me in small dark spaces
and watch me out of the corners of your eyes.
Afterwards we will move like paper ripping and live between jagged lines.

White flesh, soap flesh, fish flesh, chalk flesh.
pink lips, pink dick, pink between your fingers, pink pooling in your collarbone. 
pink milk dripping down your thighs.
you produce redness of tongue and consume
[a soft red meat that screams for space and digs digs digs].
The hardness of your dick is in my hand and then inside me.
More soft red meat digs with eager earnest hunger.
it is form tense with intention.

I am surprised at how easily my body is shared
[I am meat created to be eaten by meat].
how willing I am to accommodate! how generous I am! 
Split me open like bread and pass me round;
roll me into shapes, flatten me with your fingers;
hold me on the back of your tongue, drown me in saliva; 
chew me slow, press me against your gullet.
I was created to be savoured!
Certainly, I am still warm at my centre.

This body is communal, holy flesh; in-between forms. 
Not mine, not yours; no one is alone.

We are in the space above our heads
pressed down by the fabric of things.

Natasha Matsaert is an Anthrozoology graduate and animal freedom campaigner. She is passionate about the power of storytelling to inspire action and create social change.