"The animal you eat are not those who devour others, they are gentle creatures harm no one, yet devoured by you as reward of their gentleness"
       -- Jean Jacques Rousseau

TO FAST ON THANKSGIVING DAY
by Mira Fong

On this harvest day

Instead of swallowing turkey

I swallow rage

My animal soul screams for the murdering

Of the three hundred forty million turkeys

Factory farmed or free ranged

Foot bound, wings torn, beaks slain

Before their pleading cries are silenced by the blades

Tormented since birth

These noble and majestic creatures

Destined to be sacrificial birds

For our Thanksgiving rite

Proud and curious

Fear of pain and death

Roaming freely on earth

For a drink of water, a safe place to nest

Turkey and humans

All share the same desires

Their joy and needs mirror ours

Yet unequal, in rights

Are we not the same will to live

And to give thanks to life itself?

Our winged sisters and feathered brothers

Whose journey on earth was long before mankind

Have known the cycles of seasons and the same harvest joy

laughed and played for millions of years

Until they were chosen

Doomed to be the bird for our holiday feasts

Predator of all

In this season of abundance

What gratitude have you to offer

Must you, the youngest species on earth

To celebrate through slaughtering and bloodshed

A holocaust for turkeys?