Russell Edson

Ape

You haven't finished your ape, said mother to father,
who had monkey hair and blood on his whiskers.

I've had enough monkey, cried father.

You didn't eat the hands, and I went to all the
trouble to make onion rings for its fingers, said mother.

I'll just nibble on its forehead, and then I've had enough,
said father.

I stuffed its nose with garlic, just like you like it, said
mother.

Why don't you have the butcher cut these apes up? You lay
the whole thing on the table every night; the same fractured
skull, the same singed ...