by Julia Griffin

“Cooking Sunday roast causes indoor pollution ‘worse than Delhi'”
—The Guardian

I’m quite engrossed (in fact out-grossed)
To learn of the pollution
Resulting from the Sunday roast,
That filthy institution.

Think: round the table flock your young,
So innocent and trusting;
And all the while each rosy lung
Is blackening and rusting.

The fumes are killing us by stealth:
It’s worse than central Delhi,
This onslaught on your household’s health,
This greasy casus belly.

The answer’s easy. Stow the stove!
Ban cookers from your kitchen,
Before your children’s cheeks turn mauve
And everything is itchin’.

Act, if you must do, by degrees;
Reduce by hints, or smidgens
These weekly boosts to lung disease:
Let geese give place to pigeons;

Cut these in two, then three—just carve
As long as you can see ’um:
Your house will be, the day you starve,
A spotless mausoleum.