The Shearing Floor
Animal Rights Poetry By Lynne Goldsmith From All-Creatures.org

Comfort shorn to beatings on the floor
of twisted necks, scrotum, testicles,
an ear taken off after tails, to urine that spreads
how I can see they think you’re just the wool
of chokes to knee to chest,
no time their time
punches thrown to kicks
breaking poked to blind
faces thrown to pushed
sheep to chute
doesn’t matter the bleeds,
their time to focus on—these humans—
their needs for slamming
words with down I won’t repeat,
as if you’re the ones wrong and yet
their own mistakes for covering up
to sew right then and there
cuts they’ve popped the organs out
for shaming further pains
while blaming their own misfortunes
on struggles of your will to fight
not of your choosing being left in
overcrowded pens you are the wool again
virtues dragged, gone for invention's sake
from chunks of skinned-off knife
side back warding off flystrikes
that will come still
that will find terror in their hosts, physical loss
forming seeds for life to feed off yet another
and yet another of human errors making off
again these signs, this time, this way,
these hosts and parasite.

©Lynne Goldsmith, 2020

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay