The Paris Diet

          1870

Butchers’ lines inch forward: hours
for rationed horse, 100 grams.
Ingres-smooth steaks (dark donkey flesh),
gleam behind glass, fine bloody art.

Emeralds, pearls, gold have fled
from velvet-lined shelves. Smart boutiques
offer jewels more rare: perched inside
each bauble box, a fresh egg.

Gourmets who, two months ago,
recoiled from horsemeat’s blackish red
claim a dog chop fries up like strong-
flavored lamb, gives jaws exercise.

Rat salmi has partisans,
a partridge-pork tang. (Serve it hot.)
Yesterday: dead black cat for sale,
fresh-strangled by the owner.

Paris crawls on, ravenous
as Géricault’s Raft sprung to life.
Teenaged girls take men home for one
lump of brick-dust bread baked with straw.

Zoos supply posh restaurants:
a cut of fat-slick camel hump,
kangaroo tail, heart of giraffe;
I’ve dined on trunk of Pollux!