Crash Course in a Slaughterhouse

Nnadi Samuel

“we grow into the slaughter we are born for” – K-Ming Chang

It outlives magic: this tearing apart of mashed
bodies, without incurring a bloodstain.
broken torso, yanked from the wreck scene.
the shard stuck in between our teeth like a brand new phrase.

surgery blade tears through a lifespan.
cerecloth, holding the corpse skywards – the way you take a request to God
or take a long break.

since being Christlike implies moulding a miracle
from mirage, till the ‘nointing slacks.

I do not know about elastic pain,
but I’ve known a placenta to its stretch limit,
because I too am a product of a rough-up:

flesh stitched against free will, to rot in unkind places.
hijab; machete ripped from a woman’s neck.
skin stunned by the silvery weight of metal
to a well-peeled surrender.

how slaughter-driven this aggressive let-loose between fabric & loin,
thread & flesh wound,

boy & his furnace of a hand.
bystanders & wailing – siren that they are

fodder for accident, as we know them to be,
since holding Christ by his words implies
stating the blade where it aches:
at the tibia, a bone terribly sutured in a way we stay

piecing the hurt, till every shard takes the form of language.

*

For Every Bus Stop, There is an Equal Sporadic Shootout

This asthmatic lad pouring his breath into the failed exhaust system of a minibus –
English resting on his tongue.
a vow pinning him to the asphalt granite.

I attest to that verb full of cartridge & deadly spark.
I attest to stray bullets, misplaced hits.
to the hastiness in burial rites:

a middle-aged man, tucking in the road’s belly
his only son: a heartbreak of a child.

death comes in tripod:
two ruptured arms & a displaced head shoved under a blanket of ash.

an upturned carcass was once neat corpse anyway,
& how to account for what rage turns benevolence to a boneyard?

how he laid bone-close to earth,
till his skin browns the crimson soil.

each mound, a pathway to every foot seeking safety,
as they race, still uniformed in their grief.

boy, lacing & relacing his heartbeat in the hour
of its panic attack – pulse searching, as the nurse
rummaging a body for pockets of life.
see, there are no easy routes to resuscitation.

teenagers, spelling knife backwards.
the scar re-hatching in the ugly fashion of a
camo – blood patterned to roughening.

may God see the wound in all of this:

that the children are sore footed trudging,
maybe aware of their being chased into the slaughter they were born for.

a barrage of slain teens, tucked in the road’s belly.