【by Paige Phillips】
After Jonathan Swift and Hozier
There are so many ways to eat the young:
swallowed in fear, vomited up into immortality.
Cracked—over toast, rice, the uneven stones
of an invaded village, laid to waste.
Tossed into the soup of a frozen lake
or bloody stew. Shriveled like raisins and
dried like leather. Soaked in oil, deep fried,
slow roasted on a freshly sharpened spit.
The roots of the juniper tree run deep
but they make for lovely stock.
Have you tried the caviar? The veal?
We look on the classroom hamster with disgust,
but it’s only natural. For if man is king
of beasts, who taught the lion to open his maw?