By Michael Alessi

• It’s not the fists of steam that roll from the body
• when the sow strung up on gambrels spills open.
• It’s not her father stepping inside to cut away
• what will be chitlins, the skin
• folding over his shoulders like two wings.
• It’s not the buckets of blood
• her twin nephews lug to the barn
• and pour into an earthen trough.
• It’s not the black mantle of hair
• that bobs on the surface of the scalding pan,
• or the hook her uncle stirs the body with.
• It’s not the way the zinc can lids
• melt and curl from the heat
• as the last dark hairs are scraped.
• It’s not the sight of her brother leading
• the animal to the clearing by a rope,
• but that it lifts its head to sniff the pistol
• at the pierce of the whistle
• he has used to call her before.

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Michael Alessi’s work has appeared in New Delta Review, where he won the 2013 Ryan R. Gibbs Short Fiction Contest, and is forthcoming in Nano Fiction and Mid-American Review. He lives in Chicago. Email him at michaelalessi87@gmail.com