If Vegetables Had Skeletons, Brandon Amico

If vegetables had skeletons,
would everything be all right?
If they had ribs and teeth
beneath their flesh,
if carrots walked
and potatoes blinked,
what should we survive on?

If fruits could be scared,
how could we trust their lives
to a different god than Us?
“If you had a heart,”
you would not dare eat an artichoke.

The despotism of the food chain
could finally be abolished.
If peanuts could protest the shattering of their shells,
if the cabbage could sing to attentive cornstalks,
we could laugh
and consider them equals,
chalking up a victory
for the extension of humanity,
(finally!) our presumptuous and arbitrary rule ended
with our mouths full of sand
as evolution collapses into itself,
punctured by its own ridiculous barbs.

Let’s leave the dog outside
and go down to the garden to pick some new friends,
that we can smile on for their purity,
that we can adore for their simplicity,
projecting onto them the wails of newborns
as we lift them from the earth.
We can love them for the dirt that swaddles them,
believing it to be cleaner than the thoughts and deeds of our brothers.
They can be the us we never had.

And then together we can watch
from our deathbeds
as the cute baby almonds
grow from the dirt
and reach at the sun