The transfer is done in a dark room
with a red light to keep them calm.
Still, it’s stressful, hanging upside down,
when an electrical pulse shuts their hearts down,
and the plucking rubber fingers
and mechanical-rotary knife begin,
the shackle line continually moving,
like sterile meditations on a life,
or the sacrifices one makes for an enigmatic love.
As their legs, thighs, and wings are removed,
their heads are pulled off in a channel,
their hearts and livers preserved as edible offal.
Even in death, will I still want you?
Don’t want, can have. Can’t have, want.
Sometimes, the empty languor
of the present is almost unbearable.
Worms, crickets, minnows—
after the night, how do they recover so fully?