Facing the Uncanny in the Chow Kit Market

by Anna J. Fitting

I have kept that first sensation of thinking
That I had existed a whole six years
Not having met
a grin so extensive as the cow’s skull
resting on the metal tabletop of the wet market.

the intrusive stare of the cow’s head,
now attended shoppers with his itching grin,
of teeth as sparse and left-over seeming
as the struggling patches of vegetation on
an August stricken lawn.
Neither gums nor lips remained to dull it.

He was tormented.
torn to a hanging, peeled sinuousness.

Here is what a cow can be, I thought,
that once lived fused to rough minute hairs,
crooking legs, mobile feet,
set stationary,
an accidental spectacle of blooming mottled pink,
the discard among the butcher’s spread.