Killing by Rethabile Masilo | Poems Rethabile Likes
Killing
by Rethabile Masilo
Chauvin kills the way my grandfather did, by choking
the last, stifled breath in a goat's throat with his knee,
before cutting its neck with a knife,
in the evening on a sultry day in May, before dinner,
its bleats of I-can't-breathe! caught in the gullet of its throat.
My grandfather's knee was deaf to pleas—there was food
to put on the table.
The legs were first... then the whole body
fidgeting, its appeals enough to remind one of somebody
squirming on the side of a road. On my way home after work
I saw a guy die, and the asphalt said it'd happen again
and again, and again, and again, and again, and again,
in Amerika where the police have jobs in slaughterhouses.
the last, stifled breath in a goat's throat with his knee,
before cutting its neck with a knife,
in the evening on a sultry day in May, before dinner,
its bleats of I-can't-breathe! caught in the gullet of its throat.
My grandfather's knee was deaf to pleas—there was food
to put on the table.
The legs were first... then the whole body
fidgeting, its appeals enough to remind one of somebody
squirming on the side of a road. On my way home after work
I saw a guy die, and the asphalt said it'd happen again
and again, and again, and again, and again, and again,
in Amerika where the police have jobs in slaughterhouses.
Comments