That Pull From the Left

Painting by Annibale Carracci

That Pull from the Left



Butch once remarked to me how sinister it was
alone, after hours, in the dark of the shop
to find me there hunched over two weeks’ accounts
probably smoked like a bacon from all those Pall-Malls.


Odd comfort when the light goes, the case lights left on
and the rings of baloney, the herring, the parsley,
arranged in the strict, familiar ways.


Whatever intactness holds animals up
has been carefully taken, what’s left are the parts.
Just look in the cases, all counted and stacked.


Step-and-a-Half Waleski used to come to the shop
and ask for the cheap cut, she would thump, sniff, and finger.
This one too old. This one here for my supper.
Two days and you do notice change in the texture.


I have seen them the day before slaughter.
Knowing the outcome from the moment they enter
the chute, the eye rolls, blood is smeared on the lintel.
Mallet or bullet they lunge toward their darkness.


But something queer happens when the heart is delivered.
When a child is born, sometimes the left hand is stronger.
You can train it to fail, still the knowledge is there.
That is the knowledge in the hand of a butcher


that adds to its weight. Otto Kröger could fell
a dray horse with one well-placed punch to the jaw,
and yet it is well known how thorough he was.


He never sat down without washing his hands,
and he was a maker, his sausage was echt
so that even Waleski had little complaint.
Butch once remarked there was no one so deft
as my Otto. So true, there is great tact involved
in parting the flesh from the bones that it loves.


How we cling to the bones. Each joint is a web
of small tendons and fibers. He knew what I meant
when I told him I felt something pull from the left,
and how often it clouded the day before slaughter.


Something queer happens when the heart is delivered.



Louise Erdrich, “That Pull from the Left” from Original Fire: Selected and New Poems. Copyright © 2003 by Louise Erdrich. Reprinted with the permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.