berlin lit

Rico Craig

 

On being alive

 

There is flesh grown in a petri dish

that pretends to be alive

sometimes pretends to be

human

and we listen as the meat talks

about the marble in its thigh, 

provenance, all the grass it hasn’t eaten, 

how for years it was suckled

and called a different name. 

 

When it arrives at the table

it’ll be wearing a muscle shirt, 

boots with work socks — maybe

nothing else. No one has given it 

a fatal flaw, taught it how to dress. 

 

Its eyes are separated by a ridge

of fur, it believes the world is dewy

half-life, a transaction

made with each waxy gaze.