After a picture by Jamie Wyeth

February—(Februarius (mensis), (month) of purification

februa>, expiatory offerings, poss. of Sabine orig.)

—The American Heritage College Dictionary

• I
• In this trim girth of days came Valentine,
• A lover of trash, slurper of pre-chewed
• Dinner, rooter of other people’s food:
• How I loved you, remembering how fine
• A day, warm for the month, which roofed your birth.
• Snow dripped like grease from barn steeples and eaves;
• (It is a false spring which cruelly deceives
• Farmyard children in the naked pink of earth.)
• Father spared you from his largesse, but said,
• Handing your squealing tininess to me,
• “Love demands a sacrifice, so don’t be
• Surprised when it’s asked.” You felt, then, like lead
• In my arms, Valentine, my heaving loved one,
• Born this month of slops and expiation.

• II
• The pork report comes over the radio
• From across the river in Iowa,
• Dividing your life into a ratio
• Of belly futures to null viscera:
• Such magnitudes only portraits contain –
• The amethyst squint of your tiny eyes,
• Your humanoid expanse of facial strain.
• These held your pride, like a swarm of flies,
• To cluster and swell, gold in pinked oils.
• Now stretched on hooks above my hearth and gone
• From all but memory’s greedy taste for spoils,
• You strut your prized shanks with ribbons undone.
• So fame is broadcast for you who were penned
• For February forecasts, this runt-month’s end.

Joseph O’Brien is the poetry editor for the San Diego Reader.