Cattle Cars

The delusionality of labeling “happy”

the animals we send to slaughter

feels like proclaiming there were lots of

“happy” train passengers in Germany

in the first half of the 1940s

Like smoke wasn’t billowing either way

Like the trains to the stockyards of Chicago

and the trains to Auschwitz

weren’t both marked for death

With victims crammed as tightly

as possible for a journey

that grew no less horrifying

upon arrival

And sure, we’ve moved from railroad to semi

but the destination remains the same,

the outcome no less bleak

Gas chambers remain one of the most common

methods of sending pigs to their deaths,

filling their lungs with carbon dioxide

until they lose consciousness

and a blade can slit their throat to do the rest

And I’m not saying you have to

feel their lives are equal to humans,

I’m just saying, you could… feel

You could assign more value to their life

than a sandwich

Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust

America kills that many animals…

four times a day

And we don’t call it a holocaust

because we just breed more

so our transports are never empty,

so the death toll is unimaginable,

so we never have to stop

chew choo (ing)

If we could assign our fellow animals even

1/100 of the value of a human life,

we’d still have a global holocaust

thirteen times a year

Every day, bystanders stood by

washing their hands of the blood,

while those they were told were dirty,

were unintelligent, were unworthy

were carted off to their death

right beneath their eyes

And you aren’t even a bystander

You stand at the other end of the line

with your wallet and your mouth

wide open, waiting eagerly

for the next cattle car of victims

Written February 15, 2025