20 Slaughter House (a monologue of a butcher)
'-- All are divided into meat and butchers...
Hungry,
Every day we bring them on buses, trains and planes --
Fresh meat.
We herd them into holding pens. We funnel them
Into a single file,
Ready for slaughter.
They push forward through long sweeping curves of a hole --
We do not call it a tunnel, we call it a corral --
Feet hoofing the cement.
Curves swerve smoothly hiding from them what lies
Ahead. Each man sees only
The back of a man.
Curves swerve, calming them down in a false illusion
That they can return.
On our order, they spread their arms and legs.
We inspect them and knock them unconscious
With an electric shock
Applied to the nape.
If unsuccessful, we use a captive bolt pistol
To the forehead,
Through the napkin.
We undress them, nameless,
Fat and skinny, females and males, fine and nasty,
Separating clothes, wallets and cash into different piles,
And hang each naked body upside down by one of the leg
On the processing line.
We sever main arteries with a knife,
Mainly in the neck.
Their blood drains, causing death by
Exsanguination.
We remove their internal organs,
And inspect their inferno for parasites and disease.
We separate the guts from the heart,
The nape from the navel,
The loin from the groin,
The lean from the grease.
We remove the tongue from the head.
And send the head -- long-short-hair-bald-brunette-red-blonde --
Down the line on the head hook.
A buoy in the stream of its own blood (chuckles).
We study the carcass for safety
And chill it till distribution.
Soon we tear the chilled carcass down into subprimals and primals
And mark them down,
Flesh turning rippled slime.
We send waste materials,
Lard or tallow,
Reeking,
To a rendering plant.
We send the waste water, thick and heavy with
Blood and fecal matter,
To a waste water treatment plant.
We transport the meat to distribution centers that
Then distribute to retail markets.
...All are divided into meat and butchers.
Hungry,
Every day we bring them on planes, trains and buses --'
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