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china poems
chinese influences
other poems
Hangzhou: Government Market
When a woman in
a bloody rubber
apron with quick
hands reaches into
a tense, crammed
chicken crate
and grabs one by
the neck,
pulls it out and
holds it upside-
down over a long
tin trough,
you’d think
the bird would
protest, but it
only hangs limp.
Until a knife
is inserted like
a letter opener
into its neck,
sparking
two squawks;
it’s held there,
allowed to bleed,
and then dropped,
fluttering and kicking
into a big bloody
basket next to the trough; it
flops, leaps,
half-flies, jerks
around for about
30 seconds, stops—
jerks, kicks
a little more—
and, gradually running
down like a wind-up toy—
stops;
resting (or freshly
dead) on its
neck, or a splayed
wing, or its
open beak,
one eye closing the way the sun
pulls the sky
down
in the evening.
Then it’s scalded,
its feathers
plucked off
in a pail of
boiling water;
and handed—
steaming and naked—
to another woman
who’s already paid
for it; she ties
it to her bike and
rides away,
ringing her bell
to clear a path
through the tense
crammed traffic.