The first month was a laugh about excuses
Eat your greens and die
Once the death toll mounted (same old story)
You knew bad times were back in some new way
The rule this round: cook fruit
Cook plants
It’s in their water

So pie is fine,
And cider, jam, pea soup (but cook it hot)
A baked potato’s unsafe; chips are better
Jenn T. died from lettuce
Four years ’til you laugh about it sober
Where’d she get salad
Did she leave a note

You’d kill to eat a pear that isn’t stewed
Feel skin rasp on your tongue and pulp like sand or, if unripe, sweet wood
And chew the core to bone—

The produce aisle has curtains and grotesque alerts
One floret for each customer, wear gloves
Don't bleach it, that was last time, and the evil’s all inside it anyway
So fried like steak’s the way to eat a melon

Fish are immune. Not pigs—so farm or wild,
The meat eats meat: all safe plant matter’s way too dear to feed them

You slurp New Cherries, purple gels that never had a pit
Roast hotdog dressed as eggplant
The printed lettuce works now, limp and vibrant uniformly green
And printed kimchi and the ferment might take next time but more likely
They’ll make an almost-taste for that, blue raspberry or Cornish-Rocks, a petro-kimchi with authentic fish and mostly printmass and fake spice and vinegar

Raw milk men grow asparagus in compounds
And shit themselves to death in public office

The taste of loss is profit and its imitators:
Spruce beer and cactus candy
Unboxing algae wafers on a reel
Fine redwood wine
Old growth sequoia flavor