It's just that if cows foam at the mouth,
and if we eat cows because they taste so good
with pepper and wine sauce and baked potato,
why won't we start seething too?
Even the sprawled out potato oozing
in melted butter from the opened sides
seems to be grinning up from the dinner plate.
If the beef, butter-flied, begins to look sinister,
starts to curve its form to smile and laugh,
should we eat it? The others at the table
might notice us grinning back down
at the dead moo cow and think
yes, he's got it, I'll order the chicken.
But don't stop eating, not because of Britain
or the bonfires of cattle or the unreal image
of crazed Beefeaters throwing tourists
out of the Tower, don't start eating roughage.
What do you think the cattle eat?
Why make it twice as worse?
Just smile back at the steak and think about
the vegetarians being hauled off to asylums.
And after dinner, at home, brushing your teeth,
don't pretend the paste is making you psychotic.
That's not it. It's the cattle who late at night, secretly
gargle city water treated with fluoride, wait till dawn
and the cameramen and farmer Clive,
a Farside cartoon is all, and that's what we see
because no one wants to be eaten. Grocery Store Cashier

Her fingers wove through plastic
handles, went outstretched
looped the bags together
leaving a tight mass to grab.
Her pink nails slid down
my cold fingers, left the tips
not in longing or farewell
but like a dieing friend
who wills her children to you.
Looking at those bags
on my passenger seat,
thinking that plastic
is not bio-degradable,
why don't they bag in paper,
why do tree roots finger soil
loop up through air above ground
where they know
we can see them flirting with us,
but read too much into it
so that we never carry ourselves
in quite the same way again.