Animal Poem

Does it suffer? Tied to a tree, waiting, in the shade

of young white eucalyptus—does it know?

It’s snout sniffs, waving forward and backward,

for food or maybe just to pass the time.

It’s nothing like the little pig’s of my childhood,

not standing up right, dressed in coats and scarf’s.

There’s no brick house to run to, no salvation in

brotherly bonds. The others, they’re just happy it’s

not them.

He, or She, is alone and still just waiting.

I watched, though they told me not too, hidden

behind the same young tree, the same white

limbs, the same cooling smell.

Water is boiled, the creature, a color disturbingly

close to my own, is lifted and set on a sacrificial

table, hooves, tied with twine. Three men lift,

and the creature moves its body like a limbless

person, made up of a long torso and the face of a

pig.

One strike to the head with a mallet—it’s suppose

to be the kind way. But how? The skull is thick,

one hit isn’t enough, and rather than die, I see the

stream of piss, golden, in the sun ride down the

length of it’s leg. It screams, like a person, it screams

over and over until the mallet comes down again…

and again, and again.

Its limbs stretch out. In death, rippling muscles

under layers of fat, manages to move gracefully.

A knife in the throat, and a bucket to collect

the blood. The spasms slow—death settles in.

And still I watch, as carefully, nearly lovingly,

they pour cupfuls of boiling water upon

the relaxing corpse. The dirt comes off, the hair

is shaven, many knives go to work.

From here, at the base of the tree, I can still

hear how Its snout snorted at the earth, and those

lingering screams that attach to the branches.