THE HATCHET

I hadn’t seen it for . . .
I’m guessing 45 years.
But when the auctioneer
held it up at my brother’s sale,
it was like seeing
a long lost friend.
Its main use, as I recall,
was for dispatching chickens.

You held the hen’s legs
in your left hand
and with your right
stretched its neck between
two spikes driven into a plank.
Then you cut off the head.
Sometimes, for laughs,
you could let go of the legs
and watch it flop around,
blood spattering the grass
until it lay twitching
a time or two or three and then stopped.
You did this only when
mother wasn’t there.

The auctioneer asked
a dollar to open the bidding.
I raised my hand. No one else did.
"Let’s add this and this"
he said, holding up
an almost new hammer and
an old tool of uncertain use.
The bidding stopped, I think,
at six dollars.
I’d have paid a lot more.