Abattoir by Colin Carberry
by Steven McCabe
The stench of knackered horse carcasses seethes
into noon’s flushed stagnant light. Each slow,
inescapable death breath blights, impedes,
confuses; hits home with a body blow’s
paralyzing insistence, Let me in.
My one fan whines full tilt, I try to write,
but the sweat sticks, rasps like a second skin.
A stoned sun blanks down on the same old shite.
Blue skies blacken. Somnolent church bells toil.
Coarse hands sort the day’s takings in a till.
Our streetlight blinks and goes out. One by one
the furniture store’s night screens rattle shut.
A school bus bearing the shades of burnt out
workers belches past, RUTA: BABYLON
Colin Carberry is an Irish-Canadian poet and translator and the director of the Linares International Literary Festival (Mexico).
poemimage 
I remember Soutine’s beef carcass paintings from my art-school days. I can certainly see the connection of labored layered rawness with the images you have produced to go with the poem- very intense, all of it. Hard and real.
Thank you Jack. Yes I think hard and real it is.
Intense yes, and thought provoking.
Wow. I’m almost speechless. A map of death rendered in flesh – all very powerful.
Thank you Karen, & your description adds a poetic allegory.