WAS DAS

 A

Lament For The Co-Inheritors Of The Kindom, In Hue 

I never thought about the Book Of Genesis 

until I read that God also made a covenant with the animals. 

Wet Charcoal and Indian Red

 are for pilot whale fetuses 

cut out from their mothers and left to rot on docks after the grind, 

by Faeroe Islands whalers.

Shredded Mauve is for esophogi of geese forcibly gavaged,

 or the ruptures where thier stomaches burst,

 in Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain and France

or the color of the vomit of little Mauritanian girls

 on fattening farms, 

in a land where ancient Berber quatrains laud stretchmarks 

as pearls to fulfill the bridegrooms' corpulent canon.

Bright Cyan is for the blue bruises on the head of the piglet 

who just had a cinder block dropped on her head 

by the diurnally sober dropout, 

smoke in mouth- for funat the Kentucky factory farm. 

Be prepared for 3 billion pigs by 2050 

awaiting live scalding and slaughter in global shoat Treblinkas, 

thanks to the crescent yen for pork by Asians.

Canary Yellow and Cotton Candy Pink 

are for the edge of a beak left exposed 

after a metal beak shearer makes its jagged slice.

 Bone White is for seas of wool sheep packed onto top decks

 of New Zealand transport ships, pelted by hail, wet snow,

and bitter winds throughout, roomy 

as orzo poured into a pot, freezing at night and bleating, 

half of them dead upon arrrival at Middle Eastern ports.

 And Maroon and Roija Brown are for mulesing mutilation, 

hindquarters skinned raw, 

80 million wool lambs strong In Australia, 

to prevent flies on their butts. Flies on their butts. 

May we flay your balls, mate, 

so you don't get a sweat rash?

Never. But they flay the woman's clitoris in Africa. 

Her colors are Grape and Custom Claret.

 Maybe the force-fed and the clit-less in East Africa 

should get together for abuse-survivor groups 

led by Mrs. Lillian from Victim Services. 

The women and the animals have something in common

eclipsed apprehension

of their sacred reflections. 

Patriarchy's stubborn memes in this time of late transition are how to use, 

rather than how to cherish. I

nnochka dances in a glass window off of Highway 375 in Detroit, 

tricked when she arrived in the States,

 and her bus ticket read Chicago instead of Philadelphia 

as she was promised in the ads. 

A nanny doesn't wear thongs, 

stilettos and nipple shields, 

and isn't told to dance for truckers in transparent rooms, 

9/10ths naked while drugged. 

Her colors are Sparkling Silver and Disco Ball Multi. 

Transluscent is for the release of sorrow 

in remembrance of these sufferings

 and for the saki some Japanese drink to numb their knowledge 

of the spear-happy Taiji dolphin slaughter.

Greyed Geranium Lake 

is for those watersthose muddled, 

Crimson Red waters.

 It is expensive to wake up. 

Cpious amounts of capital will shift when we do

. Mind-boggling amounts. 

But the Sky Blue aura of the Divine Mother, 

and the Turquiose Blue of Shiva and Shakti will cradle the world, 

and when it does, remember the blue when the houses of cards fall. -Barbara Zukowski