Willamette Valley Meat Cutter

By Jack Joseph Smith

The deer was slain by the wolfmen They had the finest technological equipment Of four wheel drive and night battery light With a telescopic sight ment for stars, that caught a beed on eyes of gold WITHOUT A CAMERA Their minds were head tripping on film Through a power astronomically more cutting Upon the explosive take While their pin-head vision had mismanaged steel from high-powered magmum rifles ON SPEEDS that would not even whistle... Also mismanaged was the absence of a true hunter's - (heart to heart balance) Which made the world of the wind an absolute chewed up raw While the HITS on the carcass were a flash of wet shattered b-o-n-e-s "HEY! We ain't got no more WHISKEY!" (Why it wouldn't be sane to leave it up to hang; with us fell'ers in the truck without any good grain luck) And SHOOTING a ZOOM of a FRAME we see * Smooth sheep skin gloves * On a Long Shot? Let's get right-on no framework at all To the wife with no waste of bloody time? No, they brought the body to me And I doubble quartered cleaned it In a sink with a good sucking drain While their boots made judgement on the purple sawdust Pale white the sink with gray cracks The blood clots went from blue to red Then the misty steam turned to be blackened in the beneath of the basin
And as I rubbed with a rivet stitched towel; and on a long clean calcium thumb nail, picked with the beak of my hand (hardly at all boys - ya' might recall) very little meat remained whole: While we acknowledged the bones - shoving their jagg - to the tooth of an eye Yet to add to my $1.80 per hour on the elastic sense of a sacrifice to two Saint Bernard dogs in keepsake for Happy French and Cocaine Irish wanderers; I conjured up on the scrap meat I could get While, the big bellied boss, who had been cutt'en from Ohio to Alaska, kept right on smiling through the death r-o-t-t-e-d between his money t-e-e-t-h Just cause he'd give any crazy enough man credit; he didn't amuse me at the moment (If it's to bad old sonny, then it's to bad young daddy) Though I had to hand it to him like a country man: Two weeks past these millworker hunters - who I knew then wern't loggers - Had come in to turn over payday for what they had already done in the hay And I had signaled my mind... out from the back-room hard-wood cutting-table: - To watch the notion of the Bossman quite capable mosy about in the front shop; while he smiled these boys along the shelves... This time as a bunch they had bought in bulk - on the line with no time - $400.00 worth of canned goods After all; the Bossman, wouldn't expect them to go on a hunt in the woods without a chemical preservitive along for dinners NOW I told Mister Bossman with a personal smile Broadly outloud "for the dogs" While his SHINE'EM ON face, revealed what he believed - That I did the operation For my own salvage self

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A meat cutter processes a deer killed by hunters with expensive equipment. The speaker describes the carcass, gives scrap meat to dogs and watches the boss extend credit to hunters buying canned goods.

The speaker handles the blood and bones left by the hunters, whose equipment gives them little care for the animal. The boss's assumption about the scrap meat shows a further conflict over the value of that work. Monroe, Ore. is a handwritten annotation on the physical page, not a line of the poem.

Claude

A meat cutter describes a deer 'slain by the wolfmen' with 'the finest technological equipment', 'night battery light' and 'a telescopic sight ment for stars', reaching the shop as 'a flash of wet shattered / b-o-n-e-s'. The speaker 'doubble quartered cleaned it / In a sink with a good sucking drain', saves scrap for 'two Saint Bernard dogs' on '$1.80 per hour', watches the 'big bellied boss' smile 'through the death / r-o-t-t-e-d between his money t-e-e-t-h', and tells him the meat is '"for the dogs"', while the boss's face 'revealed what he believed -'.

Technology spoils the hunt, and the poem gives its dignity to the worker who cleans up after it. The indented 'we see' and the starred '* Smooth sheep skin gloves *' frame the hunters like a camera shot. 'ment', 'beed', 'magmum', 'doubble', 'jagg', 'wern't' and 'preservitive' are typed forms.