Meat Factory
Free Verse Poem by Leigh Doughty
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barren grey fields surrounded us out here, they dump us from small buses five or six different languages twenty workers all needing the money assigned to packaging ten workers on the line to wrap greased up strips of bacon around sausages place them five to a row shove them in plastic and slide them down the belt no toilet break work solid no talking or laughing no radio either only working moving fingers bending the back arching the knees five hour mark break time buzzer all the languages spill out again people huddle together lighting cigarettes laughing for a while buzzer sounds off back to the line no more talking lady walks around watching, waiting for us to slip up to scold us today we are good when the final buzzer sounds it's home time. sprawled out and almost dead on the backseat of this smoke filled bus aching hands all for the money meat factories all day long
Leigh Doughty is a writer and a language tutor. His previously published work can be found in the VNExpress, Impact Magazine, Meridian Magazine, and Twist and Twain.
This is the human suffering part of the operation. It began with unspeakable cruelty toward the creatures they cutting up and packaging. Great revealing poem.