My Meatless Year Poem by Frank Bana

In my meatless year
I failed to eat an aggregate
of 17 turkeys, fifty-nine chickens
a dozen cows
and a litter of pigs

I could hope that they're happy now
cared for and alive somewhere

and did not meet their end
on somebody else's plate
trampled in their pens and cages
decomposed in a landfill in Delaware
forgotten victims of our failures

so a Happy Better Year
to my fellow surviving
sentient beings

those who are
and those who might be.