Vancouver, B.C.
Book ends
Vincent Ternida
I’m a butcher of words; other writers see themselves as architects, builders, deities even. I cut slabs of meat delivered as freshly killed carcass from someone else’s inspiration. My once sharp edge has seen better days as I chop into the choice cuts. I dig through the poached beast, finding the tender oyster filled with raw emotion. I shape this roast to the bone; all its delicious marbled fat shaved away—leaving behind a beautiful steak ignored by fickle shoppers. They ask me to slice it some more; to transform the expert cut into stew chunks, chuck rounds, and cured slices for their sandwiches. Once the grocers have received their preferred cuts, I’m left with rib ends.
With these, I make poetry.
Critical Praxis
Book ends is a postcard story about the butcher’s process from cutting the carcass to the final cuts of meat on display at the market. It mostly deals with the unsold cuts becoming repackaged as ready-to -cook pieces as a way to salvage the merchandise before being tossed out.
I compare the butcher to a writer, who both work with their preferred canvas—the writer being words and the butcher being meat. The original draft had many ideas floating. With the comments from PR&TA reviewers, I was able to focus the idea to the butcher’s process and likening it to the creative process of creating a story from a raw idea.
In the second half of the postcard story, I keep the idea of “fickle shoppers” by rejecting the butcher’s work as a pushback to the creative process and giving the butcher an option to rework their pieces. It may not be to the butcher’s liking nor does it jive with their original “vision,” but they will cater to the demands of the grocers. Once the grocers receive their “preferred cuts”, the butcher is left with pieces of meat that will never be sold to the public. These “rib ends” could be taken by the butcher for their own perusal.
While a “bookend” is a piece that buttresses a collection of books, my title “book ends” likens it to the said “rib ends” from cut pieces of meat leftover from the carcass—the raw idea, to the steak—the story, and finally the ends—singular unused words and verses from the main piece finding life in shorter pieces. Hence, “with these, I make poetry.”
Vincent Ternida is the author of the novella The Seven Muses of Harry Salcedo. His pieces, both creative and critical, have appeared in several publications including The Ormsby Review, rabble.ca, Rappler, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, and was long listed for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2019. He lives in Vancouver, Canada.