The sky is a wide, unmoving chest
A woman in a yellow sundress wakes in pale arms. She tells her mother she fell into a meat processing plant. Men, cleavers and carcasses went to and fro. I had tea with the foreman, she says. I tested the conveyor belt and found it hairless. I said some things I shouldn’t, she says, I said I wanted to go home. The foreman knew I didn’t mean it and pinched the flesh on my arm. Well done, her mother says. Just look at you, all yellow in your meat & bone.
Rachel O'Neill is a filmmaker, writer and artist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. Her debut collection is One Human in Height (Hue & Cry Press, 2013). She was awarded a 2018 SEED Grant (NZWG/NZFC) to develop a feature film, and held a 2019 Emerging Writers Residency at the Michael King Writers Centre.
