Packaged Processed &

Rends-moi un service?

Do me a favor?

Peel off my skin.

Is it thick like a withering lime?

Does it fight you and your peeler, tearing off in fleshy chunks?

Is it smooth like a brand-new apple?

Torn at the quick from September’s orchard gift, pulled away from sugar sweet innards, tossed tendril by tenderloin down the garbage disposal.

If we are what we buy, where is the line between product and consumer, and how soon until we cross it? Or have we already ventured beyond the grain, blended grenades and les grenades, turned our collective ethic into something drinkable, swipeable, usable?

We lead lambs to the slaughter like we are their slaughterers, but turn around and it is sheep’s wool on our bodies, shepherd’s crook around our necks. The agony of les agneaux belonged to us all along – we are the arbiters of our own fates, and theirs.

Rends-moi un service?

Do me a favor?

Slice up my hair.

Grab your largest chef’s knife. Rip off the shrink wrap, crunchy hairspray. Fry my curls into curly fries, be careful not to oversalt them. Split my split ends, blend some into split pea soup. Save the rest for your afternoon snack.

If everything these days is processed, then what is the process by which we save ourselves from the deep fryer, the fruit juicer? What role do we have on this purlieu of a real place, under the fluorescent glow of the frozen foods aisle? Les guerres are professional here, bite-sized and perfectly palatable, while the truth is too near the gallows to stomach. Underbaked, overwrought, bound to our nutritional information.

Call me back to the supermarket. Buy me a cannibalistic sweater and a cruelty-free bunch of bananas. Beckon me in with a low price and a high stake, burn me by the same. As the flames rise higher, I think only of my mother’s chicken noodle soup, freed from a can, a mush of life and death heated to a simmer. Comfort food.

Rends-moi un service?

Do me a favor?

Carve out my eyes, my ears, my hands, and my nose: Anything that makes me sense the world in its true consumable chaos. With just my heart and my bones, will I be allowed to meander, lovesick and relentless,

Away from the grenades and les grenades

From the agonies and les agneaux

From the gallows and les guerres?

Will I finally be free?

By Annie Brown