Eating the Green Monkey

1

A son should not question his father’s diet his longing for wild game still maybe if I had drawn the line somewhere at something maybe

The waste is what I remember corpses heaped along the river edge decadent protein collapsing in the high grass and only the hunters to admire the arrangement of so much silent meat on the forest floor and only our father to prepare us to dine

I cannot remember if it was the monkey massacre or if it was My Lai and the ditch was full of my friends

I cannot remember if my father ever asked me whether I wanted to travel with him or whether more land, more cities would make me happy or whether I wanted to be happy or if more food could calm this hunger

this rage to expand a fire spreading over continents and subdividing everywhere into nations, every place.

Surely it was the monkey time that began the long decline when we were beside the river eating the green

2

That morning in My Lai we were immortal striding long-legged through the grass incapable of error, knowing all ways hearing our father’s voice above us saying go ye therefore into Pinkville and cause hunger to cease

and we marched proudly forward under that weird sky certain of our destiny slave and master we marched and the huts of our enemies

were crawling with monkeys seething on the roofs, in the windows chattering in choirs in the yards and pointing to our approach and one by one

out came the old men, the women out of the huts came babies, children, out came everyone and lay down in the ditch and said kill us everyone said kill us and we did

till the town was silent and the monkeys retreated screaming into the jungle, the green exploding

3

When I killed the monkey itself edgy in the garden sunning itself green in the golden afternoon lengthening when I blew the monkey’s brains out onto the grass the ground heaving the monkey body twisted, eyes upward

Jamming the barrel of the gun against the simian skull and blowing the monkey’s head open I felt better

I felt improved, more like myself and more like my father’s son and there in that humid landscape among the fire blood raining down till the ground was soft soft dead monkeys tattered in the grass

Willingly killing others and more raping the monkey women and boys and more

blood spattered on my face and hands, in my nostrils, beneath the lids of my eyes blood in my mouth, in the space between my fingers and darkening the river smoke from our guns rising to the upper tiers of trees echo dying away the ringing and my father glad of the feast knee deep in the velvet ground, the crimson and gore green sea

I did not know so much was still to come

4

Moving two ways along the food chain eating and being eaten we are every one of us food for something

Smallest of animals is eating me slowly travelling in my blood and counting my moments

When my father said

taste this I should have wondered why he did not eat I should never have tasted the raw meat I should have worn gloves

But the flesh was tender to be taken in far, deep a long way down

the killer in my blood was calling for more a protein so small I hardly felt the first bite multiplied now by millions and I shared the bounty with all my friends first fever burning dreams damp pillows in the darkness flesh falling away into the night

voices saying, see, he must have sinned or his fathers must have sinned

when I was eating the green monkey I did not think he would go so far but my father had a plan for boys like me

when we were eating the green monkey we did not believe he would go so far but our father had...