today, we eat a billion-dollar leather industry 
in our sweet soups, stews, sides as pomo, cowhide. 
tomorrow, civets and deer, serpents and hares disappear 
from our forests into our mouths; as our throats 
classify them bushmeat. overmorrow, crickets 
will become the appetisers that water the desert 
of our hunger. we eat every thing. we eat 
every moving thing. our mouths 
are always looking for something to hold: 
a morsel here, hope there—a temporary infrastructure 
in the quarry of our stomachs.  
             everything in the world exists 
to end up in a book, says Mallarmé. but does 
everything exist to end up in our mouths?