—DRUNKEN ANGEL WHISPERS IN MY EAR

 

 

Butchered

 

         I am nine or ten the first time I watch my mother hack a chicken’s head off, blade high, then sprocketed crimson-pink. Headless bird body submerged in a boiling pot. Feathers more easily plucked that way. A life of fluff.

I am nine or ten and just learning how to masturbate, how to make myself feel better, though I never do. 

The chickens seem submissive, as if they know all along that they are doomed for inevitable slaughter. They toddle to the pot so stupidly. Necks bowed for the Queen.

I beat off (what they call it at school) in the craggy woods behind our make-shift trailer home. I come in ropes, yogurt lifelines that no one reaches for. Not even the wind.

My favorite chicken (I name her Melissa) lays double-yolk eggs. A rarity. Miraculous. I tie a yellow ribbon around her neck to save her from bloodshed and it stays there, until it doesn’t. She’s butchered, too.

In the woods, I become a young man or a beast, I don’t know. It’s difficult to separate the two. Puberty has arrived so early, so confusing, a kind of anxious nonsense. I ejaculate in the direction of lichen-tipped boulders, evergreens, Satan and Jesus.

For dinner, my wife makes coconut-encrusted chicken fingers with hot mustard dipping sauce. A chunk gets stuck in my throat as I feel my erection disintegrating. I reach for a glass of water, but choke and never stop choking.