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Poem from:

Stopgap Grace by Neil McCarthy

McCarthy, Neil

I expected them to tell me that my bacon

had come from a happy pig, one that had had a full life,

was corn fed and had free range, did yoga in the mornings,

played the cello, spoke Latin and learned

to salsa dance while visiting relatives in Cuba.

I thought maybe there would have been a photo album

to accompany the sacrifice, documenting its first birthday,

first snow and first of everything else,

here an oink, there an oink.

In far corners, I dubbed the mouths of others,

their new voices outbattling the clattering gunnery of plates

slamming down organic everythings.

I gifted one woman berating her phone the French language

to make her all the more endurable.

Sweet as raw cane sugar to my fair trade coffee,

I had the young couple across from me nattering fondly

from their deathbeds; their soon-to-be-left world

better off now than it was when they were younger.

The child in the high chair wanted in on the action,

breaking into L'enfant et les sortilèges when faced

with a spoonload of non-GMO beige matter.

I used a sortilege of my own in stripping the walls clean

and emblazoning the newspaper headlines all

over them to see if anyone would notice, remark, question

that one glaring absence as Truth was led out the back,

strung up by its hind legs, throat slit, left to hang there

until the last drop of blood spattered into the bucket.

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