Martin Lucas
Haggis
It’s cold, not bracing cold but dull, refrigerated cold. I’m indoors, but in some large warehouse or hangar that extends into the dark, and it’s airless. The gloom is the gloom of insufficient natural light augmented by insufficient artificial light. I’m doing what I’ve been doing ever since I can remember, standing where I’ve been condemned to stand, beside a conveyor. Past me, at approximate one metre intervals, drift objects the size of small footballs. They have the texture of meat wrapped in plastic, a sort of rather formless chicken, perhaps, or haggis. At my left hand is a red-inked stamp pad and in my right hand is a stamp that says HAIKU. Opposite me is a vast bin. As the objects chug past they get stamped and move on, unless I spot some minor irregularity of colour or shape, in which case I give a swift but forceful nudge and they slide off the conveyor and into the bin. I don’t know when the shift will end, so I just get on with it: stamp, stamp, nudge, nudge, stamp ...
UNFIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION -
just for the hell of it
I let it through
Page(s) 56
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