Benares

A neon chicken grins above the fryer,
wings spread in blessing or surrender.

Streetcar ads of pepperoni pizza
promise a taste of childhood.

Coca-Cola flows like the Ganges:
polluted, beloved, bearing the dead.

Every city is a Benares of the factory farm.
Every chicken shop, a ghat.

We are the graveyards of the cow,
the pig, the chicken, and the fish.

Not a manicured churchyard,
but bone-littered, jackal-licked.

And the dakinis? They're here too,
dancing between the deep fryers,

waiting for someone to notice
the smoke rising is not steam.

The neon chicken keeps grinning.
The river keeps moving. We keep eating.

What's gone is gone.