Interspecies Entanglements: Elyla | Prayer for Tending Death

The Unprotected Protectors/We Sacrificial Roosters 

If we die 
May we be cradled 
Tangled in the arms of Mama Aisa 
Into a softness that we are owed 
Into softness    re-taken
Rooted again like feathers. 

Plucked 

Pain…      I shake.                       

I had never seen a cock fight before.
Or maybe I have (at my high school)
Gray polos; sweat-stained, ears glinting, pocket knife pulled out 
Theater 
Brown boys; acting
In hopes of erecting the men they have been groomed to become 
We are 
Raised into violent present(s) 
like
Knee-high gladiators 
Thrown in bare-chested 
Un protected  
Bumpy skin 
Raw 
We lie bleeding 
Then 
We stop ourselves from drowning.

We suck the blood out of our own throat
Preserving the fluids so we can cry instead of bleed

 Survival interlude  

It is hard for me to write about roosters outside of
our symbolic status. Macho, virile, and hopeful. Here 
I often felt myself perpetuating the same processes
that strip inherent meaning and “value” from my
indigenous, black, queer, leopard, and palm siblings.
The sterilisation of being. Even in simply being, our
bodies, animal bodies, are made into expendable tools
through which colonial capitalist patriarchy
exercises its need toward violence. We are tangled in
the barbed wire of categorization. 
Captured again and again until no shred of flesh is left.

When I die 
And my spirit rises like smoke into the every thing 
Guided by the click of  acrylic talons 
May the cuntiest cocks hold vigil 
They who care for un cared bodies
They who transmute
They who love despite