EllaraineLockie

I considered surrendering
consumption of anything alive
After reading My Year of Meats

Until I read The Loop
Where wolves kill a Montana moose
in slow-motion nightmare sequence

The pack displaying
pendulous stoles with bared teeth
that lock on bolting prey
Blood-quilted together
and flesh ripped apart

Nature's survival of fittest
that makes slaughter houses
look like Kevorkian clinics

Where maybe Montana ranchers
learned animal humanity
How to fire one well-placed shot
that serves steak for supper

Providing meals minus clandestine DES
animal antibiotics or plastic feed
Food fueled with female replacement iron
robbed by menstrual rustlers
Moral meat despite vegan disapproval

My iron-count cries for more minerals
To quiet incisors that ache
with ancestral instinct
And forebears inhabit my dreams
Haunting with their after-kill howls

Honey

Don't call me honey
in that degrading tone

After you've had
a few too many

And you really mean bitch
But can't get past

the passive aggression
that pinch hits for anger

Because it's been a few too many years

And I've come to hate
the word honey

Ellaraine Lockie is widely published and awarded in the U.S., Canada, England and Australia. Her first collection entitled 'Midlife Muse,' won Poetry Forum's chapbook contest and was subsequently published in 2000. Two additional chapbooks have been released in 2003: 'Crossing the Center Line' by Sweet Annie Press, and 'Coloring Outside the Lines' by The Plowman Press (Canada).

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