The Slumper-Thumper Poem by Sidi Mahtrow

Sitting silently at the booth in Mindy’s Café
Is an old man at the end of his day
Looking over the offerings on the menu card
Of which there were few he could afford.

Before selecting the “something”
He does some careful thinking,
He’s different from the rest of the men
Foreigners, that have hustled in
They’re short and stout and younger
He’s tall, stooped and much thinner.

Maybe fifty five or so
When you get to his age the years go.
Looking at his hands, white and clean
From scrubbing time and time again.

In his mind he sees his place on the floor.
As a new one enters the swinging door.
The sack once secured in the mother’s womb
Contains the one who’s life is doomed.
Now quickly with a practiced grace
The old man moves his equipment into place.

A swipe with antibiotic dressing
Clears the path to the target’s blessing
Between the ribs he skillfully passes the needle
Into the heart and watched the flow of the blood into the waiting vessel.

As the volume begins to ebb into the vacuum stand,
He thumps the side with the heal of his hand,
Driving out the remaining blood from the heart and tissues,
When complete; for a moment pauses.

Then secures his equipment
For the sanitizing treatment
So that this batch could join
Others identified only by a number on.

The lifeless one for which no one cared
Is sent to the offal bin where
It with the thousands of other pounds of waste
Will be discarded with dispatch.
If one asked the old man what his job is called,
He’d reply that his job was one essential
For the first step in producing fetal calf serum
Which to avoid distaste is called; “fcs”, an acronym.

Science requires this precious fluid
For research and products that will find
Their way into serving mankind.

Still it is an unpleasant job for any man
Especially one that understands
The taking of one life from so young
Seems to be simply wrong.

But then the name given, “slunk”
Seems to say it all; it’s reduced to a hunk
Of never-born life that is dispatched
As man seeks to find solutions to problems, cached.
They were unknown just a few years ago
But now are a part of the way that things go.

So, a slunker-thumper the old man’s called
Not a proud term for a job he didn’t want it at all.