JUST ASKING

If you could kill anyone and get away
with it, who would you kill? Would you choose to axe

an ex? Would dictators dictate your evening
plans? Buddhists in our audience may be horrified

but who are they to judge? Dung beetles, aardvarks,
pythons in past lives, now they slaughter plants

for supper, thinking nothing (of it). Protein
like me or Mussolini or a free-range

chicken can run away when threatened, but broccoli
doesn’t stand a chance: chained to earth, blindfold

on, cigarette dangling, it nervously awaits
its firing squad of calloused immigrants. If you

can garrote squash or guillotine corn with a clean
conscience, then perhaps offing an executive

whose calloused eye for profits killed thousands
would not pose such a stretch. We only kill

what we eat, rifles back the hunter in the crowd,
thinking pheasant thoughts in full flight, not

revenge. But when you kill someone you consume
them, in a sense. The way they consumed you.