The Slaughter

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

It was Monday morning when José
and his brother came for her.
Slowly she got up and looked at them
with friendly, pale blue myopic eyes.
But when they tied her legs up, till she couldn’t move,
she began screaming,
human like,
so high pitched that a hall mirror in Antonio’s house cracked
had his wife worried.
Perhaps the pig has a human soul?!
And the ink in my fountain pen froze.
When the scream, to my relief stopped,
I knew her throat was slit
and that she convulsed as life seeped out of her eyes.
A happy sow had given birth to many endearing piglets in her time,
a sty all by herself thinking that she was happily retired.
Blessed are the innocent
and with gusto we will eat their flesh.