CHOOKS REVISITED

but he had never expected to live to see 

one hog dressed by several hundred men.

It was like a wonderful poem to him 

and he took it all in guilelessly. — Upton Sinclair

I was immune to the smells. The flesh that came

to me down the line, hand over fist under cleaver,

grew less tender to touch. The meat, hard

in my palms, was difficult to love. I broke bones

down the backs of beasts like breadsticks, snapped

chook necks with my brothers like sharing wives.

We do all that here, under one roof, with knives.

I stopped feeling guilty, was no longer disgusted

by the cannibalised corpses we swapped. The chooks

stripped clean to the bone, minced or diced,

thinning down to the end of their lives 

like the cigars we smoked. We were a machine making death.

I worked overtime, eyes down on the belts, obsessing

over skins, removing the sinews that cooked tough. 

With each chook, I performed automatic routines 

with my fingers and never came up for breath.