By Con Chapman
They enter slowly in twos, pairs of kids and cattle.
Once in the center of the ring the auctioneer begins
his call, one of each knows that this will be all.
The buyers and lookers-on stare and see only the other and
how much meat it holds on its bones—they bid by the pound.
It is over too soon. In the eyes of the children one seems
to detect a failed stoicism; it’s not a pet they’ve been
told before, it’s how we earn our bread. We wouldn’t
have the things we have if we didn’t sell them, let them go.
Still, the eyes betray them. They are giving up a being
they have raised — for cash, a cold trade for a living,
breathing mass of flesh and heart and bone.
Rays of light shine though the windows near the ceiling,
catching motes that seem to loll idly down an unseen street,
kept aloft by the commerce within; they will settle later.
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer, author of Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges (Oxford University Press), winner of the 2019 Book of the Year Award by Hot Club de France; Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good (Equinox Publishing), nominee for 2023 Book of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association; and Don Byas: Sax Expat (University Press of Mississippi).
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