Wheeled elephants, the lumber trucks rumble
through dry brush, folowing parallel ruts
that pass for roads, punctuated here and there
by a clattering plankboard bridge.

Where they groan and squeal to a stop,
the men handle smaller creatures
that caterwaul and bite through trees,
toppling them to the jungle floor.

Hunters follow with shotguns and knives,
tracking evicted quarry, killing with a blast,
gutting, hacking off limbs and heads,
stacking carcasses on the trailer,
under a black tarp, beneath huge limbless logs.

This illegal cargo goes to the city,
spread-rib displayed in open-air markets,
or cooked and smoked in brick kilns.
The people have a taste these days
for wild meat, more exotic than pig or cow.
It harkens to the days of the bushmen,
when good legs and a spear
brought the biggest prize.

Some peddlers sell the newest catch:
fresh-killed chimpanzee.
The roasted hands are popular here..
One vendor displays a head,
filmy-eyed, dead-blind,
frozen in mouth and brow,
as if at the moment of death
she was forming a question.

09/26/2001

Posted on 09/26/2001
Copyright © 2024 Bruce W Niedt