The butcher is bent, gone in the back. When he lifts the knife you see the flashes of the ceiling fan, the hair stirring on the arm, the cocked wrist, and then he brings it down, heavy and precise, to cleave, and for a moment the silver swooped blade is flanked by parting red.
That’ll be nice, Mrs Jones, and he offers a little smile, lifts the flesh as if to examine its life, then wraps it in crinkling paper and, practised, the hand that cuts returns the knife to its cool holster on his old and broken hip, wrapped in a drooping striped apron, smeared and splotched, to show the agony of the day.
Haha, thanks for reminding me of that, those marvellous ‘free’ saveloys…I remember our local butcher handing one over to me!
like the close-ups (arm hair etc). Rhythmically different to your other work.
Best not show the local chap lest he recognise himself. Thanks for the kind words.
Butcher’s eh? Thought meat grew in packs wrapped in cellophane? The image of the fan blades, the child-like angle I remember, looking up at these things, getting a free sav…
Like a painting by Goya, John, ‘bloody’ marvellous, and the little things you put in there, the ‘crinkling paper’ brings it life for the ear and the eye. Damned if I’ve read a better portrait of a butcher! That ‘cool’ motion caught as well, the returning of the blade to the holster and, yes, that striped apron.