Meat Grinder
There’s a meat grinder in the classroom
that two students used
to make an artistic representation of race
as social construct
for their Museum Room in America project.
That was their thing — race as social construct.
Take a big ball of meat, that’s humanity,
everyone the same — fat, oil, protein —
then shove it into the bowl at top,
turn the crank,
and what comes out the bottom end
goes this way and that.
Black, Irish, Italian, White, Muslim.
You get the picture.
The meat grinder sits on a desk across the room.
Somedays, kids come in and take it apart.
They unscrew the crank.
They bolt it to the desk.
It just stays there, gets moved around, sings, farts,
holds itself tight
when all the lights have been turned off
and the radiator clanks.
Right now, it sits alone on the tabletop
and there is Duduk music coming out of my speakers.
It makes the meat grinder sad.
Once, a wild band of Turks ran through an Armenian village
and wiped everyone out.
The meat grinder knows it had something to do with this.
That it was not the hand that shredded the ball of beef.
That it was the tool.
One day the students will come into this room and dismantle the meat grinder
to its elemental parts.
They will leave. Go home to their neighborhoods
and their dogs and families.
All the lights will get shut down and the radiators will clank.
When they come back in the morning
the meat grinder will be fashioned back to its whole self.
Like magic had something to do with it.
Like a force greater than ourselves
will always know something we never could.