Prompt

Describe the last time
you ate something
you killed yourself.

Use words of three syllables or less.
No more than twenty lines.
No use of the definite article.

If you haven’t yet killed
and then eaten something, 
you’re not off the hook. 

If all your food is killed by someone else,
if you could never and have never,
you are not off the hook;

even If you object on moral grounds,
if you do not believe in killing,
if you are the vegan of all vegans, 

you are not off the hook.
If this poem offends you, if these instructions
offend you, you are still not off the hook. 

Describe, instead,
the last death that helped you
to sit there, hearing this, reading this. 

Who died to bring the rare earths
to your phone?  the oil to your car?
the compassion to your face?

Whose departure left you so wanting
and desperate that you swore a fool’s oath
against the necessity of death?

Use words of three syllables or less.
No more than twenty lines.
No use of the definite article.

Think hard, pure soul,
gentle soul:  who died
to get you here? What hand

did you have in that,
even if it was unconsciously given
by the fact of your birthplace and time? 

No more than twenty lines
on how you have never, ever,
been more than an hour or two away from food.