Mechanical Bull

MARGARET W.

There is something of my body that says welcome stranger Says put up your aching legs, rest your head along me

There is something of my body that says saloon door Open for business Now serving fresh meals, hot and ready

The gap between my thighs is a vacancy sign In the damp and dark, blinking, pulsing red You take the room reserved

The jut of my hip is a banister we both hold tight Stumbling now 11 drinks deep Written on my ribs, a specials board Prime cuts for one night only If not devoured by tomorrow they will rot The expiry date scrawled across my chest clearer to read come the morning light

There is something of my body that says mechanical bull Line up for a turn to ride Two fingers fumble, slip a sweaty coin in the slot Jump on its back Stick your spurs into grooves worn deep and raw

It moans robotic, a predictable performance pre-programmed If you look into Its painted face you see brown eyes that look almost like mine You almost consider It human You almost see me gazing back

It is beast of burden, grazing in The Uncanny Valley Disquieting puppet, a moving corpse Sentience, now 100% man-made

There is something of my body that says sacrificial lamb The way of carnivore and prey is righteous The church of apex predator, eat my body, drink my blood We give thanks to the cow, for the calf is good

Good cow Sacred cow Good dog Good girl

How many bodies steamrolled flat did it take to build a boys’ club like mine? How many of our bones ground up in the china Led to slaughter, the sticky entrails forgotten under foundations Bovine skins carpet beer-soaked floors Every last scrap of us haunts those rooms, none of the animal gone to waste We can no longer wail with our tongues cut out

It is cattle mutilation It is soft tissue surgically severed The aggressor alien in their act of dissection

As I lie on my side my body is silent in the dying grass Rotted and gutted I am mechanical bull, scrap metal The bedsheets pool around a carcass unnamed