The Bag of Feed — Blackbird Archive

← v19n1, Spring 2020

I was on my way home from the farm where I worked when a bull

attacked me. I hid behind a tree, but he came around and charged

at me again. I realized I had a red shirt on and this must have

enraged the bull, so I tore it off as fast as I could and threw

it on the ground. This seemed to have worked because the bull

walked up to the shirt and snorted at it, then walked away. I

picked up my shirt and rolled it into a ball and walked on my way,

naked from the waist up. When I got home I told my wife about

the bull and she laughed and told me I should remember to

never wear red to work. The next day I was milking a cow in its

stall when it turned around and started kicking my face. I laughed

so hard I kicked over the bucket of milk. And the next day I was

feeding the chickens when one of them suddenly flew up and bit my ear.

It bled so hard I had to go to the farmer’s house and get his wife

to bandage it. The next day I was feeding the pigs when one of them

bit me on the ankle. It hurt terribly and I had to quit for the day.

My wife told me I was allergic to the farm and that I had to quit

my job there. It didn’t make any sense to me. I had been working

there for twenty years. Nonetheless, I did quit. It made me

sad to do so. When I told Mr. Johnson, he said he understood.

He said one of his workers had been eaten alive by the chickens

many years ago. He said it’s called The Bag of Feed Syndrome.

The animals think they know you so well they begin to think of

you as a bag of feed. I thanked him for all he had done for us

and said my goodbye. On the way home I secretly cried. My wife

said everything would be alright. On the first morning home I woke

with my left hand missing. I looked everywhere for it. I hid

the stump from my wife, and she didn’t seem to notice. The next

morning my right leg was gone. And so on until there was

just my head lying on the pillow. My wife asked if I wanted

breakfast and I said, “I don’t think so.” The thought of it

made me sick. Well, it gave me a headache.

humor rural-life animals

James Tate

James Tate (1943–2015) was the author of over twenty poetry collections, including the posthumously published The Government Lake (Ecco, 2019). His earlier collections include The Ghost Soldiers (Ecco, 2008); Worshipful Company of Fletchers (Ecco, 1994), which won the National Book Award; Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 1991), which won the Pulitzer Prize and the William Carlos Williams Award; Distance from Loved Ones (Wesleyan University Press, 1991); Constant Defender (Ecco, 1986); Viper Jazz (Wesleyan University Press, 1976); and The Oblivion Ha-Ha (Little, Brown & Co., 1970). His first major collection, The Lost Pilot (Yale University Press, 1967), was selected by Dudley Fitts for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Tate’s other honors include an Academy of American Poets chancellorship, a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Poetry, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Tanning Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He taught at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.