{"id":3630,"date":"2022-12-08T18:49:57","date_gmt":"2022-12-08T23:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/variantlit.com\/?page_id=3630"},"modified":"2022-12-08T18:49:58","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T23:49:58","slug":"beef","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/variantlit.com\/beef\/","title":{"rendered":"Beef"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Beef<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Stephanie Yu<\/span><\/h3>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||-2px|||” custom_padding=”0px||0px|||”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” custom_padding=”0px|||||”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.9.10″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Josefin Slab||||||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ text_font_size=”16px” text_line_height=”1em” custom_padding=”|0px||0px||” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]<\/p>\n

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Gossip about our lordship\u2019s feasts travels through our village of Flop. How a year\u2019s <\/span>supply of beef is baked into the pies. How every sumptuous meal ends in a sumptuous orgy and a <\/span>trip to the vomitorium. My mates insist the digested food of ladies and vassals is more edible <\/span>than our nosh. To which I rib, \u201cThen I\u2019ll be first in line with a fuckin\u2019 spoon!\u201d <\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Rudolpho is to be quartered on Sunday. It has been a long while since we had some sort <\/span>of sport. And what sport it is. All of Flop in the town square as the wood and the body strain like <\/span>a chair being pried apart at the joints. The pop of the leg coming off. The screams of Ruldolpho<\/span>
echoing overhead. My mates laughing as they pretend to whip the horses, lashing the air around <\/span>them into a frenzy.<\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I catch a glimpse of our lordship at the perimeter on his way to his winter estates. A <\/span>carriage gilded pink and gold against the gray and excrement of Flop. His dainty hand draws <\/span>back the curtain. His nose wrinkles. His lip curls.<\/span>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cHere he is thinkin\u2019 he\u2019s better than us maggots in old Flop,\u201d I tell the butcher. \u201cBut he <\/span>shits in a bin just like the rest of us!\u201d The butcher gives me a whiskery smirk as he hacks a grotty <\/span>shank to the bone. When I am in bed with my wife, I think about his ropy hands gripping meat. I <\/span>start to loosen my johns to grip at my own meat, to handle it as the butcher would, thinking long <\/span>on his hands, his sweat, his smirk.<\/span>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I know such thoughts would send me to the stocks, flay my skin to bits, loose the cheers <\/span>of my mates into my ears as I expired on the pillory. Such thoughts only end one way in Flop. <\/span>Even when it is well known that our lordship fucks his sister.<\/span>
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 No sister fucking for this old maggot. My wife and I wedded almost twenty years. She <\/span>has one eye missing from a childhood fever, though many tell me she cuts a comely figure, the <\/span>eye notwithstanding. When a wan light catches her weathered face, I say to myself, I love her. And when she brings me porridge after a day of tilling fields, I pretend it tastes of bile and rich beef.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stephanie Yu<\/strong> lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Longleaf Review, Phoebe Journal, and Southwest Review, among others, and has been previously selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. Find her @stfu_stephanie.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u00a9 Variant Literature Inc 2022<\/em><\/p>\n

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Beef Stephanie Yu Gossip about our lordship\u2019s feasts travels through our village of Flop. How a year\u2019s supply of beef is baked into the pies. How every sumptuous meal ends in a sumptuous orgy and a trip to the vomitorium. My mates insist the digested food of ladies and vassals is more edible than our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159740901,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"

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THE HOUSE IN THE DESERT<\/strong><\/h1>

Nell Smith<\/span><\/h3>

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1.<\/span>
When the house was built, it was all desert here. Now, the house is flanked by a Best Western <\/span>and an office building, and traffic noise from the intersection cuts across the dry gulch. There is a <\/span>mesquite tree, a palo verde, and several olive trees out front. Cracked brickwork has collected<\/span>
years of dust and debris around the two palm trees that rattle in the wind. A prickly pear cottoned <\/span>with cochineal bugs lolls by the weary wooden fence which is propped up with stones. <\/span>Mountains block the horizon giving the illusion that we\u2019re at the city\u2019s edge, but the mountains<\/span>
are really just islands. The little patch of desert that surrounds the house is an island too. The <\/span>animals here are unruly: Gila Woodpeckers drink deeply from the hummingbird feeder. Javelinas <\/span>eat from the compost pile and Mourning Doves nest in the carport. Every few days, the packrat<\/span>
who lives in the garage climbs up our windowsill to sip from the birdbath. <\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 The first time I stay alone in the house, I walk the empty lot behind it gathering creosote to make <\/span>a salve. I say empty, but that is only out of convention. The lot is full with creosote, brittlebush, <\/span>and palo verde, and I can only tell there was once a neighboring house here by evidence of the smaller, younger plants growing up in its footprint. I only collect the bright green tips from the creosote; the new growth, shiny with resin. I move from bush to bush, careful not to take too much from one plant. Careful, despite knowing that at Yucca Flat, Nevada, twenty-one creosote plants were leveled during atomic testing in 1962 and all but one regrew. I am trying to make a home here. Creosote usually propagates by seed, but they also clone themselves; as the oldest inner stems die off, new stems establish along the periphery, growing outward in ever-expanding rings. Left to their own devices, these covertly cloned assemblies can live thousands of years. When I have filled the stainless steel bowl with their tips, I strip the tiny pointed leaves until my fingertips are tar-black. That night I sleep under a blanket of bruised leaves and oil melding into the smell of the desert after a hard rain\u2014the kind of rain when every root in the packed dirt relaxes and unravels in the blossoming soil.<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div>

2.<\/span>
When the desert heats up, its creatures look for cooler climes. The house is old and unsealed. We <\/span>try our best to jam, nail, tape it up, but it\u2019s no good. Word spreads. A baby lizard greets us from <\/span>the kitchen sink. Crickets serenade us in the living room each evening. Moths faithfully gnaw our sweaters. (I try not to think about the centipede.) The cockroaches can\u2019t wait to crowd in. <\/span>They spiral up from the septic tank and pool into the relative coolness. I find them hunkered <\/span>under the cutting board, tucked inside the toilet paper roll, keeled over in the empty french press, <\/span>tickling their antennae out the drain slot as I brush my teeth.<\/p><\/div><\/div>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I try to be serene. I place water glasses over them, slice sheets of paper under the rim, and <\/span>deposit them outside. Only occasionally, when one bursts from the folds of the shower curtain, <\/span>do I break up their house party with the old beaten swatter. We tell the cat to do his part and he <\/span>lets a lizard go inside the recliner. <\/span><\/p>

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 It\u2019s fine<\/em><\/span>, I tell myself, watching a scorpion wheeling around the track of our dinner plates. Not all <\/span>species are that venomous; ours are probably fine. But no, I quickly discover we house the most <\/span>venomous scorpion in North America. The article assures me that death is extremely rare then <\/span>lists a series of alarming symptoms and an enthusiastic note about what great climbers they are! <\/span>Still, it\u2019s not until I\u2019m on the toilet and notice a scorpion drunkenly beelining it for my bare feet <\/span>that I finally accept it: this house is not ours.<\/span><\/p>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/p><\/div><\/div>

3.<\/span>
I find a photo album from the house\u2019s first inhabitants\u2014my partner\u2019s great aunt and uncle. There <\/span>are photos of the house in its infancy, under construction with all its undergarments showing, but <\/span>in just a few pages, it\u2019s all tucked in and tidy with squared-off shrubs and a trim green lawn. I <\/span>keep turning the pages and the months between Christmas feasts are condensed to a quarter-inch <\/span>of photo sheets. It is lived in. Tomato plants rise from the ground and turn to fruit. A dog sitting <\/span>on a lap transfigures into old age and, eventually, into a new puppy. Toned muscles and bikinis <\/span>turn to oxygen tanks. In each photo, I see things I recognize: a bench, a birdhouse, a basket. The <\/span>house is filled with artifacts from someone else\u2019s past.<\/span><\/p>


\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 My partner and I make our offerings: we keep the birdbath full, put half-oranges in the mesquite <\/span>tree for the Verdins, and cook nectar for the hummingbirds and woodpeckers. We sweep the <\/span>flagstone and think it looks pretty nice, even though I suspect the coyotes will be laughing <\/span>tonight about how long that will last. I turn the compost pile and daydream about vegetable <\/span>gardens and the refrigerator door fills with Christmas cards. Sometimes I feel like the house is <\/span>watching me, like it knows I am only passing through. When the creosote tries to join hands <\/span>across the driveway, I trim it back and place the branches in a jar of water in the bedroom. At night, the hum of the crickets start up from the other room and we fall asleep, over and over, in the blurred space between indoors and out, between our world and theirs, between illusion and dream.<\/p><\/div><\/div>

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Nell Smith<\/strong> is a writer and field biologist based in Arizona. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment & Natural Resources from the University of Wyoming and works to cultivate reciprocal relationships between the arts and sciences. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in EcoTheo Review, Camas, Pidgeonholes, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. Read more at www.nellsmithwriter.com<\/a><\/p><\/div><\/div>

\u00a0<\/div>

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\u00a9 Variant Literature Inc 2022<\/em><\/p>

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