Yes, pork chops.  I cut off the fat and wrap 
them separately in plastic, my dear.  Thanks.  
I know I shouldn’t eat them but they were 
on special, and they were Mr. P’s second 
favorite dish—porkchops with baked beans and 
applesauce—so they’re for old times’ sake.  His 
first favorite?  Roast beef and potatoes 
with green beans or cauliflower, all of 
them cooked to death, the way his mother did 
them.  In time, he’d tolerate a little 
crunch in his vegetables and a blush 
in his beef.  Over the years, I even got him to 
spread out as far as the occasional 
lasagna and stir fries over white rice.  
He preferred beef to chicken or pork and 
spit out my one attempt at tofu.  
Well, in fairness, so did I.  No take-out 
but his precious pepperoni pizzas.  
Would you wash off those potatoes, dear—and  
just set them on the drainboard?

Talked to him once about becoming 
a vegetarian.  Fat chance.  We’ve always 
eaten animals, he claimed, speaking for the 
species.  It’s in our nature, like razing 
forests and dumping the waste overboard.  
In his opinion, shitting upstream from the 
camp’s in our genes.  Nietzsche thought so, too:
exploitation belongs to the essence 
of what lives. . .  But, my dear, all the cow farts 
and ex-rainforests!  

                                Saw this young scientist 
on TV and thought he meant to flatter us.
A spectacularly successful species, 
he said, then I caught the irony—it’s like   
calling the bombing of Hiroshima 
a  proficient job of urban renewal.  
Well, we can’t live without our steady fix 
of diffusible molecules; stones won’t 
do and meat tastes good; but the more we eat the 
worse things get for us and the world.  When the 
heat thuds down, we up the air-conditioning, 
burn more ancient algae, a deadly cycle. 
If to live is to exploit, then is the 
only answer death?  But who wants to hear
that salvation requires starvation?  
            He may live without love, 
            what is passion but pining?  
            But where is the man 
            who can live without dining?
That’s Bulwer-Lytton in a genial mood
during the Industrial Revolution.  
Yes, dear, the-dark-and-stormy-night guy.  

Mr. P. didn’t start out sclerotic but, 
like his arteries, he got more so and 
wound up believing our DNA is as 
conservative as a Georgia Republican.  
What do I know?  Maybe it is.  But the 
genes can evolve, can’t they?  Opposable thumbs, 
less hair, bigger brains?  

                                       Did you see it hit 
a hundred-and-eighteen in Siberia 
last week, dear?  Siberia.  Way things are headed, 
nature’s going to turn on this successful 
species and she won’t spare the vegans.  Old 
folks have much to answer for, unthinkingly
gunning our V-8s , heaping up the national 
debt, outliving the Social Security 
actuaries’ projections—so selfish. 

Nietzsche was too mad a prophet to be 
consistent, too sensitive a seismograph.  
He extolled the planet’s beauty but knew 
what spoiled its complexion.  The earth has a skin, 
and that skin has diseases; one of its 
diseases is called man.  What was that, dear?  
Progressive but sexist?  Maybe, but I
don’t think he meant to let women off the 
hook—or that he hated us.  Read him closely.
I think you’ll see he was afraid of us.
     
Oh, the cold cream and shampoo?  Just set them 
aside, dear.  I’ll take them upstairs later.