On the Farm

So I recently received an interesting excerpt from an original work by an anonymous reader to fit this month's theme. And when we apply the word "theme", we're always internally anticipating that our contributors will interpret that theme in more ways than one! It's the spirit of writing to be different and ingenuous with our understandings of the same set of words- actually, that was a major focus of our workshops and still is a huge part of our philosophy going into our programs for this school year. So without further ado, here's one of the more inventive interpretations of our theme, "the mask".

FARM STORY by ANONYMOUS

The ascension of the cockerel to the top of the fence each morning at dawn is a blessed plague upon our farm.

He caws loudly and excites all the animals from their hesitant slumbers, flaunts his freedom and mocks us with his impunity.

For the men who hold the reins of the farm in their puny hands, the day is always the same;

they skim across the wrinkled faces of the twenty hogs at the trough with blunt indifference as they shovel the slop,

and slam the whip down hard on the bulls, shrugging off the rusting tractors in the shed.

The animals’ faces are always changing, as some or the other get packed in trucks and hauled away when the proper batch sits on standby to replace them and finally get released into the barnyard,

but the looks on their masters’ faces are as they were for the batch before, and the batch before that, and countless batches before that.

It’s a way to save feeling and time, so that when the hand clutches their throats at slaughter hour, it stays firm,

because that’s the mark of a farmer’s hand.