A New Veterinarian Spends a Compulsory Year Working at a Slaughterhouse

Melissa Sussens

I have watched death.

Have become so familiar with slaughter

in the last 204 days that I will see it

with my eyes closed, even two years later --

My white gumboots splattered red,

the bare white walls and steel frames

echoing with the growl of saw

splitting sternum. The dull thud of another hide

tossed down a chute to somewhere other

than here. The cold death banging into me as I fight

my way through the crush of carcasses

to reach the chiller’s exit sign.

To survive, I separated myself

from the living, raced home

to scrub myself clean. No soap could chew

through the smell of sulphur of 800 sheep packed

tight as coffins in a mass grave.

I haunted the compulsory hours,

a silent witness to each ending,

there but not there.

I did not speak against

the prodders or the whips.

I did not remove the calf

left to watch its mother stunned.

I did not call out after the truck

overloaded into a trample of death.

Life was eviscerated and quartered,

every day. The person I thought I was, bled out.

No longer can I hold myself holy --

I am fifteen again, at boarding school, watching

two girls clamp the pillow over another’s head.

It takes five minutes until unconsciousness.

For two, I did nothing.

Just stood there, complicit.

Featured on 14 October 2021

First published in New Contrast issue 193 as 2nd prize winner in the New Contrast National Poetry Prize

Dilemma of Second-Degree Lostness

Riaz Solker

I got lost on my way to getting lost.

And now in order to be found,

I first have to find my way

back to lost.

But lost

doesn't like

to be

found.

Featured on 14 October 2021

La Grande Soufrière

Brian Walter

From the mangrove swamp

with its rich and static waters,

dark and brown-black blue,

the path snakes through the margin zone

of those worldly yellow hibiscus trees

and quickly out to the clear lap of ocean.

Beyond – across the broad bay sweep –

is the opaque blue mountain

of the bigger island. Volcanic,

silent and softly grand, the great

sulphur gate, hunching its strength,

and waiting…

But here, just in from the sea

– just a lazy stone-toss length –

is a small building, dirty white

and cracked, seeming to be

an unkempt restroom, crouched

with that windowless threat:

and I skirt it, circumspect,

turn to find it is a simple shrine,

light blue walls inside, a ceiling black

with holy candle soot; floor and shelf busy

with icons, crucifixes and fresh flowers.

In this world of such wear and tear,

I find myself in a glade with flitting

hummingbirds and bird song,

where, just steps from our uncertain sea,

a small shrine has candles burning

for Mary, Notre Dame de la Mer.

Allegories of the Everyday, Dryad Press, Cape Town, 2019

Featured on 30 September 2021