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These Kill-to-Live Policies

Susie Gharib

‘We eat each other,’ she cries with disdain,
a twelve-year-old who refuses to chew her steak,
stiff morsels that her saliva refuses to wet,
waiting for a sign to spew them out into a napkin or a nearby basin.

I feel utterly helpless before this habitual scene
and beckon her to dispense with the spurned protein,
with the polluted beans
which for her are imbued with the fragrance of the deceased.

She had seen the law of the jungle on TV,
the ripping of wild horses and poor deer
and told me that she would rather be eaten than eat
her fellow creatures, her first playmates
for as a child she befriended cows and sheep
and would not go to sleep
without her dog beneath her feet.

I reason out with her, reiterating the legacy of creeds
that these creatures were born to nourish and feed
the elected human species.
With moist eyes she retorts at my speech
and asks me to tell God to change the way he feeds
his children for powerful as he is,
he can undo these kill-to-live policies.

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