the turkey butcher

In honor of the Thanksgiving holiday I present a poem my sister and I wrote for a creative writing assignment when she was in junior high and I was in in high school. It is a parody of the poem "The Village Blacksmith" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I'd encourage you to read the original before reading the parody because it makes more sense that way.

The Turkey Butcher

Under a spreading chestnut tree
The turkey butcher stands;
The butcher, a bloody man is he,
With red and calloused hands;
And the muscles of his scrawny arms
Are strong as rubber bands.

His nails are crisp, and black, and long,
His eyes are like the tan;
His hands are wet at the turkey’s debt,
He years to clean his hands;
The whole world looks him in the face,
He is a mental case, you understand.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his mallet blow,
You can hear him swing his heavy hand,
As he screams, “Yowwwwwwwww!:
Like an Angus ringing his old cow bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Looking at the open door;
They love to see the fatal hand,
And hear the turkeys roar,
And catch the feathers that fly,
Like the snow of the blizzard of 1624.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among the boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears an angel turkey’s voice,
Singing with the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like dinner’s voice,
Singing from Paradise!
He needs not think of it once more,
How in the pot it lies;
And with a hard rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling, hungry, sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning he sees the turkeys come in,
By evening on a plate it goes;
Something attempted, something done,
Will this poem never close?

Thanks, thanks to thee my sort of worthy friend,
For listening when thou needed not!
Thus at the flaming oven of life
Our turkeys must be brought;
Thus on the butcher table shaped
Each cutting deed and thought.