Joel Chace
On Orchid Tierney’s this abattoir is a college
Tierney cover
(Calamari Press, 2025)




This reader retired after thirty-eight years of teaching.

"is the unit a cow or the house. a student a professor. is it a lecturer. a counsellor. a scholar. a worker. a loafer. a guide. a manager. a mentor. an advisor. the police. a parent. a warmonger. a manager. a friend. a wheel. a collaborator. a flatline."
"transcripts in garages. classrooms. test preps. anatomies. GREs. SATs decorate the white walls. common apps. cover letters. syllabi. policies. cattle. transcripts. chattel. capital. broken bottles on the edge of kitchen sinks."
"admission buildings. parental outreach. alumni networks. financial aid offices with elevators that take years to reach each floor. they spin syntaxes and prefixes. gerunds and pluperfects. subjunctives. continuous presents. they are creating perfect futures.
"what is this Hog snorts. an english department."


This reader once lived across the road from his grandfather’s barns and cattle.

"the unit builds one cooling room. then another. the heat of stagnation. a factory line and fault line in a meatpacking district. sentences collapse on edges of callouses. chattel move in. organs move out. the unit is brainless. and stupid. and useless. and tender."
"yes Hog opines. but how can we truly know disastro if a serpentine ramp is calming"
"nurture. enchanting. the desire for dirt. offal. blood. urine. feces. to place the killing at the window. to graze sill while the unhappiness unfolds."
"Limpet places the gun on a temple. a brain. a holy matter. ritual slaughter. mystic inscriptions on skin. a beautiful harrow."
"a cow is a part in a system. also a poet. also mad brain. also a whole. a cow is a moon. also meat. something that jumps over. this cow is milk. that cow is kind and kin. alsokyne and capital. which is to say cattle and chattel. which is to say a metaphor. this sentence is sin."


This reader attended colleges and universities.

"an unreasonable college buds on the edge of the city. a mission for Madness. disastrous inquiry. a wound of infinitives. a bruise of prefixes. a gash of suffixes. gerunds and pluperfects. continuous presents. the unit is imagining a perfect future. helpfully burns ludicrous textbooks too expensive for purchase. secular classrooms. poor skin and useful for slaughter."
"a unit of windows and doorways to heaven. a ledge of stars. and constellations. spells and enchantment. a college that is a loss of. lips of. desire and pain. academic freedom is connected to strange kinds of commodity. imprints of consumer. albatrosses to the slaughter. an abattoir of. productivity. quality. safety. transparency."
"forced community is a slogan. remember. the institution is a mother. she will never love you back."


This reader played on a hill where livestock fed.

"when each line is a hook. the text hangs like a carcass transferred from the slaughter. this line is bare offal. this sentence is tripe. this syntax is tongue. these words are spleen. beautiful organs drawn to the dinner table."
"a hoof. a gun. a fall. a knife. a swing. a swig. a glint. a body in motion. this text hangs like a carcass."
"a unit is a commodity is a system with purchase. a sentence is a corral. this line is for profit. replication is calming. enclosed in the pen."
"cattle are chattel. are capital. are units. are unity. an untidy udder. a worker unit."
"soon the knife notches the calendar of bone. here is the tripe. there is the offal. here is battery. there is blood. here is fat. there is heart. o oooo. over time the unit will resemble household items."


This reader fled a university and vowed he was finished. He returned.

"blue books. maintenance worker. charcoal. athlete. white and brown sugar. glass. HEPA air filter. classroom. water filter. gummy bear. dean. chewing gum. plastic bottle of vegan dishwashing liquid. admissions building. professor."
"why is a semester a semester wonders Limpet. a quarter a quarter. why is a fifty-minute class a tactical session. why three hours not four. why is the structure a closure. a pen holding slaughter. a blue door to heaven."
"but a sign on the wall that crows Kaplan Education Institute. learning is burning and SATs are now the cows’ knees. all-in-one histories move from bone and grist to for-profit test preps."
"the university is a contradiction. a prison. a tool for capital. for creating machines."


This reader heard the story about his grandfather’s two work horses falling into the swollen, freezing creek. They screamed and drowned.

"murmurs and heartbeats. clover and cleaver. I grew up impoverished he hears a soft voice behind a blue door. I was middle class. another unit appears. and organs depart. this unit is dissembled for internal inquiry."
"a ghost house spites the banks of a hidden holy river. a spectre of dread. the zombie of toil. this is a century that calls itself dust. callouses that dress for a silent market. a reputable killer refuses to handle."
"units eel through the chutes like hard water. tourists move in. organs move out. a list of conditions promises poor pleasure. if bones are sentient. if bible is conscious. if rumen is ruminating. if maw is divining."
"a thousand apocalypses happen each day. not all of them are meat."


This reader’s heart was broken at the final university he attended. He left. Returned. Finished.

"the unit buries the cow in the backyard. and waits for inspiration. after six years it resurrects from the dirt with a PhD. applies for jobs with professionalised CVs. writes cover letters with keywords. research agendas. teaching philosophies. drops pronouns for ritual slaughter."
"meat in tenure reviews. meat in job interviews. meat in evaluations. another article. another poem. another book project. another product."
"but for its innovation in predictable practice a unit is awarded an endowed chair. critical imagination is recalled in the passive. the unit is now a professor of inconsistency and evasion. time to celebrate. it can now write modern poetry."
"a pedagogy of enchantment is a mouthful of no."


Books like this abattoir is a college saved this reader’s life. Then again, there aren’t really any books like this abattoir is a college.