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The cattle, screaming from the slaughter
house, can be heard all the way down the dirt road to the next ranch. Their deaths are handed to them. Handless, & capable of nothing. Beyond sound, white -tailed deer skitter in the distance. Once, my father reached for his rifle. Once, my mother stood at the split-rail fence, close but far enough from slaughter not to own it. The ranch would be hers alone, afterward. Perhaps I am the distance. My father always said the head is first to be lost. The heart, first to be eaten. The cattle, though. The sounds. Stunned before being hung by a hind limb to ensure a humane end. Tenderness. The abattoir rules for each house. The poverty of logic. A truth with no hands, & birds circling overhead. |
About This Unit: Poems on Family and Finding Other Lines of Symmetry |
CHELSEA DINGMAN’s first book, Thaw, was chosen by Allison Joseph to win the National Poetry Series (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Her second poetry collection, Through a Small Ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (University of Georgia Press, 2020). She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.
