slaughter

He fires a stun gun, one of them.

The other pulls her by the ear and curses.

She vomits. Her eyes twitch

back into their sockets

as her blood

tiptoes across the grime soaked overalls.

He wipes his nose on his sleeve.

She buckles and sighs.

The pulley wheel squeals

as they raise her like a flag. At full mast.

The knife is sharp.

A single cut up the belly,

branching before the udders.

A few swift moves at the hock

and the gristling sound

of a body pulling apart.

The disconnecting of connective tissue.

The thinning of fat. The skinning,

the baring of all.

In the fashion, he grins,

of removing a sweater. A remembrance

of peeling a kindred skin

from a paid-for whore he once had.

“She’ll knock you out,”

the man had promised

in his careless northern accent,

as he’d counted notes in a fat hand.

Saliva tickles his bottom lip.

His tongue slicks out to take care of it

then he sets to the carving

like every big man does

on a Sunday. He wipes

his forehead with the fat of his thumb. None

so big as me.

She’s so straightforward. Easy meat

like the slags in Delaney’s.

The other one holds her steady. He rips

through her flesh and, satisfied,

lays the pieces in a tidy way.

The tidiest, maybe, she’s ever been.