Meatworks by Robert Frost Help. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter AshleeM
- Start date
Re: Meatworks by Robert Gray Help.
Seeing as I can't find a copy on the internet anywhere. I'll just type it up quickly. PS> It is Robert Gray not Frost.
The Meatworks
Most of them worked around the slaughtering
out the back,where concrete gutters
crawled off
heavily, and the hot fertilizer- thick,
sticky stench of blood
sent flies mad,
but I settled for one of the lowest-paid jobs, making mince
right the furthest ends from those bellowing,
sloppy yards. Outside the pigs' fear
made them mount one another
at the last minute. I stood all day by a shaking metal box
that had a chute in, and a spout,
snatching steaks from a bin that just kept refilling
pushing them through
arm-thick corkscrews, grinding around inside it, meat or not----
chomping,bloody mouth-----
using a greasy stick
shaped into a penis.
When I grabbed it the first time
it slipped, slippery as soap, out of my hand,
in the machine
that gnawed it hysterically a few moments
louder and louder, then shuddering, stopped;
fused every light in the shop.
Too soon to sack me----
it was the first thing I'd done.
For a while, I had to lug gutted pigs
white as Swedes
and with straight stick tails
to the ice rooms, hang them by the hooves
on hooks---their dripping
solidified like candle-wax---or pack a long intestine
with sausage meat.
We got meat to take home----
bags of blood;
red plastic with the fat showing through.
We'd wash, then
out on the blue metal
towards town; but after sticking your hands all day
in snail-sheened flesh,
you found, around the nails, there was still blood.
I didn't usually take the meat.
I'd walk home on
the shiny, white-bruising beach, in mauve light,
past the town.
The beach and those startling, storm-cloud mountains,
high
beyond the furthest fibro houses, I'd come
to be with. (The only work
was at this Works.)---My wife
carried her sandals, in the sand and beach and grass,
to meet me. I'd scoop up shell-grit
and scrub my hands,
treading about
through the icy ledges of the surf
as she came along. We said that working with meat was like
burning-off the live bush
and fertilizing with rotteness,
for this frail green money.
There was a flaw to the analogy
you felt, but one
I didn't look at, then----
The way those pigs stuck there, clinging onto each other.
Robert Gray
The Meatworks
Most of them worked around the slaughtering
out the back,where concrete gutters
crawled off
heavily, and the hot fertilizer- thick,
sticky stench of blood
sent flies mad,
but I settled for one of the lowest-paid jobs, making mince
right the furthest ends from those bellowing,
sloppy yards. Outside the pigs' fear
made them mount one another
at the last minute. I stood all day by a shaking metal box
that had a chute in, and a spout,
snatching steaks from a bin that just kept refilling
pushing them through
arm-thick corkscrews, grinding around inside it, meat or not----
chomping,bloody mouth-----
using a greasy stick
shaped into a penis.
When I grabbed it the first time
it slipped, slippery as soap, out of my hand,
in the machine
that gnawed it hysterically a few moments
louder and louder, then shuddering, stopped;
fused every light in the shop.
Too soon to sack me----
it was the first thing I'd done.
For a while, I had to lug gutted pigs
white as Swedes
and with straight stick tails
to the ice rooms, hang them by the hooves
on hooks---their dripping
solidified like candle-wax---or pack a long intestine
with sausage meat.
We got meat to take home----
bags of blood;
red plastic with the fat showing through.
We'd wash, then
out on the blue metal
towards town; but after sticking your hands all day
in snail-sheened flesh,
you found, around the nails, there was still blood.
I didn't usually take the meat.
I'd walk home on
the shiny, white-bruising beach, in mauve light,
past the town.
The beach and those startling, storm-cloud mountains,
high
beyond the furthest fibro houses, I'd come
to be with. (The only work
was at this Works.)---My wife
carried her sandals, in the sand and beach and grass,
to meet me. I'd scoop up shell-grit
and scrub my hands,
treading about
through the icy ledges of the surf
as she came along. We said that working with meat was like
burning-off the live bush
and fertilizing with rotteness,
for this frail green money.
There was a flaw to the analogy
you felt, but one
I didn't look at, then----
The way those pigs stuck there, clinging onto each other.
Robert Gray
