Morning Ritual
Every morning, after the roosters
Crow back whatever prayers were passed
Down to them that dawn
From the keeper of their order up in heaven,
I drink my coffee
To the sound of squealing pigs
Being bled to death
In the market up the road -- the same market
Where I buy my fresh bread
For my peanut butter and jam. The pigs
Are bled through an armpit wound.
You can see it coming throughout the day before,
Hogs tied sideways to the backs of bicycles,
Tight as a spine, going as far as the border
Where the price is right. You will pass them
On the asphalt to the town I get
The peanut butter and jam from. They know
The bikeways out of nowhere
And suddnely they're alongside your jeep.
I lie: only goats are taken to the border.
The goats are bled differently,
And skinning is harmless after slaughter:
All you do is a vertical skin-slit
Between the shinbone and Achilles tendon,
Stick a thin metal rod
Through it, up the thigh, pull it out
Then blow, mouth to hole, mouth to hole,
Until your breath dehisces
Fascia and dermis, reaching the belly:
Your hands
Should even out the trapped air.
Between blowing and tapping
The animal is tight as a drum.
Now the knife that slit the throat.
Who knows
What you'll need skin for.
The Earth in the Attic (Yale Series of Younger Poets)
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