Unmanned

Transgenic Pigs

The oink is a fugue, Baconian
and philosophical. By a corncob moon
they snaffle, silvery-hulled backs
adrift & dolphin-arched in the mire. A
litter of stars in the laboratory-bright
sky. PUT SOME PORK ON YOUR FORK
intones the television commercial. O but
but these are no bristle & foam flecked
boars of Arcadian Days, brutally twisting
on some Danaan spearhaft, in a
flying rage tearing at ilex roots, or
blasting marble shards with iron-tough tusks.
These are the sleek-lined, chrome-bright
& delicate trottered. These with a call
soothing as a computer bleat, ears
alert as mobile phones, flesh pliable as
an artichoke, temperament cool as a cold
cut. These, the upwardly mobile,
porcine delicacies, models of dinner-table
decorum. Designer-label pigs, feted,
wined & dined exemplars of taste, accepted
in the most refined of social circles.
These are