Heart still beating,
Filleted for serving,
Soon to be eaten,
Body of frog
In another case
Butchered for fallopian tubes,
Hasma, humans wanting younger
Looks (tissue fatty),
Look,
Snouts and rear legs
Severed by scissors
Alive for thrown into piles
Parts to become trinkets
Of dipped into oil
Boiling
Maybe fried alive on sticks
Liquified for drinks, medicinal
Claims (ancient source)
Or stuck in containers
Too tight to live
For transport
Pithing too can't forget
Or decapitate,
Open, cut the flesh
More peeling of skin
Make use of
How frog
Can’t save itself
Before hands
And mouths
Move in—
Don't think
Don't feel—
These humans
Of slash to swallow
Pollution, theirs for losing
To paving over, disavowal,
More the spreading
Of human-made
Fungus on frogs, grounds
A pall from too dry too wet,
Infection, Precipitation—
Growing
Earth-destroying
Climate-altering
Disease in humans, deadly
Call it here and now—
Human Global Mass Destruction.
©Lynne Goldsmith, 2022
Coral finger tree frog -
LoggaWiggler from Pixabay
Go on to: From Underwater Lying with Shores
Return to: Poetry by Lynne Goldsmith
Return to: Animal Rights Poetry