My friend Mary forwarded me the most lovely poem. Well, maybe “lovely” isn’t the right word since it captures the experience of slaughtering chickens, something I’ve done so many times yet never once thought of as poetic. The poet Ellen Bass has captured the experience so beautifully in all its gore, finality and reflection. I’ll be thinking of this poem when we next process birds in the spring.
What Did I Love
What did I love about killing the chickens? Let me start
with the drive to the farm as darkness
was sinking back into the earth.
The road damp and shinining like the snail’s silver
ribbon and the orchard
with its bony branches. I loved the yellow rubber
aprons and the way Janet knotted my broken strap.
And the stainless steel altars
we bleached, Brian sharpening
the knives, testing the edge of his thumbnail.
All eighty-eight Cornish
hens huddled in their crates. Wrapping my palms around
their white wings, lowering them into the tapered urn.
Some seemed unwitting as the world narrowed;
some cackled and fluttered; some struggled.
I gathered each one, tucked her bright feet,
drew her head through the kill cone’s sharp collar,
her keratin beak and the rumpled red vascular comb
that once kept her cool as she pecked in her mansion of grass.
I didn’t look into those stone eyes. I didn’t ask for forgiveness.
I slid the blade between the feathers
and made quick crescent cuts, severing
the arteries just under the jaw. Blood like liquor
pouring out of the bottle. When I see the nub of heart later,
it’s hard to believe such a small star could flare
like that. I lifted each body, bathing it in heated water
until the scaly membrane of the shanks
sloughed off under my thumb.
And after they were tossed in the large plucking drum
I loved the newly naked birds. Sundering
the heads and feet neatly at the joints, a poor
man’s riches for golden stock. Slitting a fissure
reaching into the chamber,
freeing the organs, the spill of intestines, blue-tinged gizzard,
the small purses of lungs, the royal hearts,
easing the floppy liver, carefully, from the green gall bladder,
its bitter bile. And the fascia unfurling
like a transparent fan. When I tug the esophagus
down through the neck, I love the suck and release
as it lets go. Then slicing off the anus with its gray pearl
of shit. Over and over, my hands explore
each cave, learning to see with my fingertips. Like a traveller
in a foreign country, entering church after church.
In every one the same figures of the Madonna, Christ on the Cross,
which I’d always thought was gore
until Marie said to her it was tender,
the most tender image, every saint and political prisoner,
every jailed poet and burning monk.
But though I have all the time in the world
to think thoughts like this, I don’t.
I’m empty as I rinse each carcass,
and this is what I love most.
It’s like when the refrigerator turns off and you hear
the silence. As the sun rose higher
we shed our sweatshirts and moved the coolers into the shade,
but, other than that, no time passed.
I didn’t get hungry. I didn’t want to stop.
I was breathing from some bright reserve.
We twisted each pullet into plastic, iced and loaded them into cars.
I loved the truth. Even in just this one thing:
looking straight at the terrible,
one-sided accord we make with the living of this world.
At the end, we scoured the tables, hosed the dried blood,
the stain blossoming through the water. —Ellen Bass
(Thanks, Mary)
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
I really don’t like to be critical but . . . . so much for chicken for dinner any time in the near future.
Ha ha! Sorry to kill your appetite!
beautiful poem/photo essay
Interesting post. The bloody hand at the end was a nice touch.
I loved so much of this poem. I almost wish it had ended at the line “entering church after church.” But that’s just my MFA workshop ptsd coming through. I love poetry’s ability to take anything and turn it beautiful by simply embracing it wholly. Great post!
I love it: MFA workshop PTSD. HAR HAR HAR!
Total commitment to her subject matter, with a sublime result.
Forgot to add, the accompanying photos really add something. They bring the poem to life, perhaps unnervingly so, but I appreciate the visual explanation that was in some cases as arresting as the poem — for example the bird with its head in the metal cone, and the bloody hand. A great post!
You really lost me on this one. Poem reads like it was written by a psychopath.
I’m sorry but, well done as the poem is, I found this to be really distastful and for the first time in my life, am contemplating vegetarianism from a purely humanitarian point of view. I am far from a squeamish person and it’s not like I’ve had my head in the sand about how a chicken gets to my table but seeing it so graphically displayed was a bit much.
Don’t feel bad, Diane. I worked in a chicken processing plant to earn money for college, and I thought this crossed a line. The treating it as if it were beautiful bothered me. Turning animals into food is necessary, unlovely work. It is not beautiful.
Much more beautiful and respectful is the way the traditional native Americans thanked whatever God they worshiped for the animal that gave it’s life that they might live.
Claiming that the gore of death, any death, is beautiful sickened me.
Despite being a vegetarian and the proud owner of three decrepit chickens who will not be turned into food (at least not by us– I can’t vouch for those pesky foxes), I was well-disposed toward this post. Ellen Bass is truly an amazing poet, and, whatever her views, I admire her for not pulling any punches.
However, I always cringe when you euphemistically write about “processing” your chickens. Surely taking a life (or many) shouldn’t be reduced to just that?
You have a point. “Processing” is an antiseptic spin on the brutality of poultry farming. It just sounds better at dinner parties.
After reading the responses to this post, it saddens me to see how far our society has come to where butchering a chicken is crass, but let’s uphold the rights of women to abort a human baby.
It is what it is folks, to eat, (meat) this is the process. Grow up!
No one who responded to this post was childish. They related their honest feelings. No one claimed to be in favor of abortion, which has nothing to do with this poem or this post.
Thank you, Paula. My thoughts exactly.
I see it like Jenn, when we get a visual on the reality of our actions it smacks us in the face. Like me, Jenn must yearn for women to speak up with outrage over abortion instead of the slaughtering of chickens. This is
not judgement on you personally, it is a comment about our catastrophic social mores.
Fantastic post. What a lovely, brutal poem.
Wow, who would have thought such an intriguing poem could be written about slaughtering chickens?!? I guess you have to work with what you’ve got!
Fellowship with family and friends is something to write about, and if butchering is one of those times, so be it. I, as a fellow meat processor, could’ve done without a poem about it.
What I got out of the poem was that, despite all the gore and ugliness of the task, by participating in it, she was facing the truth that in order for us to eat (if we eat meat).. animals must die. Participating and seeing the resulting progress was also rewarding in it’s own way.
I have butchered chickens too. I would challeng any non-vegetarian to participate in something like this.. at least once. Because it is a little bit of a white lie people tell themselves to think that meat just magically ends up in little styrofoam trays covered in wrap.
I also take comfort in knowing that animals raised by myself are cared for much differently than those raised in more commercial environments and that wild animals deaths are generally full of more suffering than those experienced by animals raised humanely and killed compassionately (if there is such a thing).
However, I understand the vegetarian viewpoint and if that is what you prefer, more power to you. I actually try to eat more vegetarian things for a variety of reasons.
Well said, although I’m not a vegetarian I came across a book a few years ago entitled Dominion: The power of man, the suffering of animals,and the call to mercy by Matthew Scully. He writes that because man has dominion over animals it is our responsibilty to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or equality, but because they don’t. He states that what we owe them is a humane existence and a merciful death. It was not an easy book to read and upsetting in many ways but changed the way I thought about the processing of animals for our food.
Lol. Nice poem, slightly morbid, but you know, what isn’t. I wonder if she wrote a poem about processing a deer too.
What I found most compelling about the poem is the elegance of language juxtaposed with the raw brutality of the topic — a clash of high and low.
Huh? I’m still not eating chicken again yet.
I don’t even eat chicken again for a few days after processing, I mean, butchering!
Powerful! This is an extraordinary, unsettling poem. The poet says it all in the lines:
Even in just this one thing:
looking straight at the terrible,
one-sided accord we make with the living of this world.