COWS

by Matthew Stokoe

They don't know what it means to slaughter through an eight hour shift, to kill and keep killing until the death of an animal sings to you of things beyond yourself."

skinning, slicing, hacking, boning, dismembering, rendering

We’re all those necessary… probably

arabesques of cigarette smoke

Or could this elation, this feeling of possibility be a delayed gift from a dead cow?

The cows yelled like morons at an evangelist meeting, a chorus of affirmation. Steven waited for silence.

She died feeling clean, the happy weight of the poison resting outside her, pressing against her hip.