A Consideration
I saw some brains at the butcher’s shop, I was told they were very fine— and I shuddered to think, as I looked at them, they were probably better than mine.
Kay Sage
SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)
I saw some brains at the butcher’s shop, I was told they were very fine— and I shuddered to think, as I looked at them, they were probably better than mine.
A woman walks into a butcher's shop, spots a tray of brains, and hears that they're excellent quality. Then comes the twist: instead of thinking about dinner, she thinks about herself. The brains on the counter might be sharper, healthier, or simply better than the one in her own head.
The joke works because it flips something ordinary into something unsettling. A brain is normally the thing that does the judging, yet here it is being judged by comparison with a piece of meat. The speaker's shudder sits somewhere between a laugh and a real flinch. She's poking fun at her own intelligence, but the humor carries a faint chill, since it reminds us that the mind we're so proud of is, physically, just another organ you could buy by the pound.
The tone is dry, light, and self-mocking, kept tight by short lines and a neat rhyme. The poem is over almost before the unease sinks in.