6-27-03
Six people with sharp knives,
separating buffalo hide from meat -
three Mandan men with whetstones, swapping
dull blades for sharp ones.
"Hey! That’s not sinew,
those are my fingers!"
Stretch the skin, cut, stretch, cut,
swap out the knife. Taking turns
cutting and stretching, to relieve
our aching hands.
Knee against meat -
use the back muscles to pull.
Standing on a tarp
awash with blood, slippery.
Trying to stay clean -
like some silly city-slicker.
Thoughts of clean forgotten,
after sprawling across the carcass!
Teenaged girls on fly patrol
trying to control thousands
of buzzing pests, forming
a fluid black carpet.
High adventure: "Wow!
I killed 12 with one swat!"
Grizzly work, carving
300 pound chunks into
freezer sized pieces, with
women silently washing
egg covered meat, making
ready for storage.
Affluent Europeans
shot this bull, for sport and trophy,
donated the meat to Sundance -
if we’d skin it for ‘em.
Hooves and hair for medicine,
bones and scraps for the dogs.
Five years old, weighed almost a ton.
Come feast day, at Dance end,
this relative’s sacrifice
will feed three hundred people,
and keep several families alive
through the frozen winter.
Two hours later, we fired up
the chain saw. It was worth
all that effort, just to watch
them Austrians scatter
as thousands of little chunks flew
when that saw bit into meat.