feast

you cultivate me
harvest all my intuitions to blind disaster
i am the last of the great-great-great
the porcine shape in sterile suspension
cursed are these figs you bring to my lips
and the soft lies i tell myself

"this is all just a machine"
and i am a brass nightingale
a reminder yet to courtesans and cattle
that a line in the sand displaces a million grains

i am eating myself
encased in glass and rarer air
i preside as my organs are carved and allotted,
lifted steaming from silver platters to fine china
into the mouths of my esteemed guests
--the queen, the good doctor, and the elephant man.

Ah, the marvels of modern medicine!