Foie Gras

(First published in the collection Furthermore: Seven Poems)

Among my pantheon, there is a joke
Consisting of only two words:
Foie gras.
The phrase is grim humor in itself,
Its punchline, inevitably alien.
In our faith, the Creator is Creation.
All things are its aspects.
We are all the Creator; we are all everything.
To hate a thing, is to hate oneself.
To hurt another, is to hurt oneself.
So how curious, how bizarre, how laughable
That a person might feed themself to death
Against their own will
Because such a glutted demise
Makes their flesh delicious.
What could the Creator have been thinking
When it made a Creation that contained
Foie gras?
When you are disgusted by the practice
Of shoveling gruel down a resisting throat
It is the Creator, repulsed by itself.
My pantheon titters with jaded laughter.
They are the Creator too, of course.
They giggle like adolescents:
How little we must understand ourselves
To be confused by what we choose to do.
Foie gras.