Chew

Chew, chew, I’ve had it with this chewing, rat’s teeth on a lead pipe, a squirrel opening the brain-case of a black walnut.

I don’t want to chew like some glassy-eyed ruminant, bottom jaw going back & forth in the monotonous rhythm of pestle against mortar.

Nor do I envy the carnivore’s lot, so single-minded in its devotion to messy drippy stinking tangles of other creatures’ pain, the toxic rot of its bite.

Chewing is a waste of time. I want to return to the soup, a fetus sampling the world through its belly, a whale with a mouth like an aeolian harp, the whole slow song of it fed on krill.