Pink, oily bodies hang on a line
like cloth of muscle and hair.
Flayed in rapid order with a delicate slice
of pelt, they are held by their feet, their skin
pulled from the flesh, down toward the damp
ground. The five-year-old girl wept, having held
these same rabbits only a day before,
gathering them close, fur to face, stroking them
and sensing their pulse beneath her fingers.
My Greek neighbor had done this for years,
raising rabbits to die, and displaying them
on a nylon wire to sell to other neighbors.
The girl's tears failed to spark in him
a gnawing nightmare of wet body parts
lurching through late night foam,
creeping up the back while wailing out
our mortality, proving we are no less
flayable, with emotions ripped
from the muscles of psyche. Nothing
stirred the panic from my neighbor's hand
even as the girl ran into the house,
unable to bear the dead rabbits,
with their furred feet intact,
speaking to her of how soft things can lose
their mild yielding, how they can become
creatures of clawed meat, become objects
that invade wretched memory when something,
anything, pushes out the soft white sheath
of innocence.
Luis J. Rodriguez, Trochemoche (Helter-Skelter)