Dave Bonta imagines death as something crafted rather than suddenly arriving. The word "artisanal" usually belongs to handmade bread or cheese, so using it here is strange and a little darkly funny. Death becomes a product made slowly, out of "dirt and prison stone," materials that suggest burial, confinement, and heaviness.
The middle lines carry the idea of time. This death is made "from hour to hour / till it was midnight," as if it is assembled bit by bit over an ordinary day. Then come "drunk" and "work," two ways people numb or wear themselves down. Judging by these images, the speaker sees a life of labor and escape as a gradual way of dying.
The ox comparison closes the poem on a tired, dumb patience. The ox is "whole but odd," complete yet somehow wrong. The mood is grim, weary, and quietly observant, with a dry humor that keeps it from feeling melodramatic.