The Sand Hill Review http://www.sandhillreview.org 2004

Mad Cows and Cannibals

The food chain

was such a simple thing,

the animal eating grains,

the man eating the animal,

keeping away the predator to

spare the domesticated that

ate the grain and seeded the meadow.

Remember the black and white

cheap drawing in fourth grade science?

The co-operative pig, the cheerful chicken,

the almost smiling bossy not minding

that her calf had been surrended.

Subdue the earth was the trans-

lation and we got so good at it.

In high school there was this story;

The farmer killed his wife, an

undetectable crime, and fed

her minced bones to the chickens.

But the last page had those

hens going mad for blood, and

tore that farmer to death.

Cannibal animals, mad cows and

poisioned fish, we are not meant

to eat our own. Diseased and weakened

cannot fall away, but are recycled

into death and madness. Why

don't the labels get it right?

Cow fed beef, mackeral from

spoiled waters––salmon food.

Mad Man disease. We insist

the animals imitate us.

We eat our hands.

JCWatson