Gray, Robert

The Meatworks

1. Most of them worked around the slaughtering
2. out the back, where concrete gutters
3. crawled off
4. heavily, and the hot, fertilizer-thick,
5. sticky stench of blood
6. sent flies mad,
7. but I settled for one of the lowest-paid jobs, making mince
8. right the furthest end from those bellowing,
9. sloppy yards. Outside, the pigs’ fear
10. made them mount one another
11. at the last minute. I stood all day
12. by a shaking metal box
13. that had a chute in, and a spout,
14. snatching steaks from a bin they kept refilling
15. pushing them through
16. arm-thick corkscrews, grinding around inside it, meat or not –
17. chomping, bloody mouth –
18. using a greasy stick
19. shaped into a penis.
20. When I grabbed it the first time
21. it slipped, slippery as soap, out of my hand,
22. in the machine
23. that gnawed it hysterically a few moments
24. louder and louder, then, shuddering, stopped;
25. fused every light in the shop.
26. Too soon to sack me –
27. it was the first thing I’d done.
28. For a while, I had to lug gutted pigs
29. white as swedes
30. and with straight stick tails
31. to the ice rooms, hang them by the hooves
32. on hooks – their dripping
33. solidified like candle-wax – or pack a long intestine
34. with sausage meat.
35. We got to take meat home –
36. bags of blood;
37. red plastic with the fat showing through.
38. We’d wash, then
39. out on the blue metal
40. towards town; but after sticking your hands all day
41. in snail-sheened flesh,
42. you found, around the nails, there was still blood.
43. I usually didn’t take the meat.
44. I’d walk home on
45. the shiny, white-bruising beach, in mauve light,
46. past the town.
47. The beach, and those startling, storm-cloud mountains, high
48. beyond the furthest fibro houses, I’d come
49. to be with. (The only work
50. was at this Works.) – My wife
51. carried her sandals, in the sand and beach grass,
52. to meet me. I’d scoop up shell-grit
53. and scrub my hands,
54. treading about
55. through the icy ledges of the surf
56. as she came along. We said that working with meat was like
57. burning-off the live bush
58. and fertilizing with rottenness,
59. for this frail green money.
60. There was a flaw to the analogy
61. you felt, but one
62. I didn’t look at, then –
63. the way those pigs stuck there, clinging onto each other.