Cleaver Of Devil's Kitchen Poem by Fred Rik Kesner

They name me Cleaver, though I am no hand,
but the patient edge of centuries,
a blade honed by the Southern swell,
by wind that tastes of iron and kelp.


I split the dolerite as kin are split —
not in malice, but in the slow necessity
of tide and time,
each fracture a journal of what was kept,
and what was carried away.


Below, the broth seethes —
foam thick as ghost‑milk,
steam rising in the blowhole's gasp,
as if the earth itself were cooking
its old, unspoken griefs.


I have swallowed anchors,
and the names tied to them;
I have heard the rope‑burnt prayers
of those who dangled over my mouth
to glimpse the churn,
and felt their shadows
slip into my keeping.


Yet I am also a joiner —
my spray salts the air
that drifts inland to the gum‑roots,
where descendants breathe it in,
unaware they are tasting
the same brine
that once sealed their forebears' lips.


Stand at my rim, and I will
show you the ledger's two columns:
one for the living,
one for the gone —
and between them,
the thin, wet line
where I keep the knife.











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