The Sunday Poem: Outside School, Lima

Apologies in advance for a grim poem this week!

Outside School, Lima

I saw it on the flatbed: a horse
belly slit open, large chunks
of meat missing, hide flapping

like a flag, tail dripping off
the edge of the truck

cars jostled to follow it, every one
full of children like us, begging
their mothers, asking
for nightmares

I got none, but I have to tell
the story, or else the horse
died in vain, and the children
will have nothing to worship

no flag to follow
no rules to break and later obey

Yeah, I actually saw this when I was a kid living in Lima, Peru. Pretty much just as described, the truck driving past the school very shortly after the final bell rang. I can only assume they had used the horse for meat for something… of course, all the kids wanted to see more of it, in the way that only ten-year-olds want to see dead things.

It’s always struck me, I guess, how the things that we follow and worship are always things that inspire “awe,” in that sense of awe that I learned as a kid in Sunday school: both amazing and also terrifying.