Porkopolis

A Partial History of Swine

• The Question
•  
• At night in the slop yard where swine
• settle under tall yard lights cauterizing the dark,
• the sound always comes back:
•  
• a mosquito's wire-thin insistence bending in
• and out of their ears,
• an unanswered question.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• DeSoto Brings Thirteen Swine to the New World
•  
• The swine had never been on water before.
• For weeks they heard it sloshing the hull,
• creaking its weight against the boards
• they rooted along for some scattered bit of slop,
•  
• but saw nothing they'd never seen before —
• not the water's vast stranglehold on the ship,
• nor the constant carnival of gulls —
•  
• just every other pig's dim ass
• swaying its way toward the new world.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• Microcosm
•  
• The swine won't drink from the trough.
• They recognize something new
•  
• has breached the water,
• a world without bones:
•  
• along the scummy bottom
• larvae curl,
• little triggers.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• Swine on Christ
•  
• What's he done that's so special?
•  
• Bleed? Die?
•  
• I've seen that trick before.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• Transubstantiation
•  
• This little piggy went to market
• where one name strips away as scalded skin,
• and another is uncovered in the flesh itself,
• marbled like fat in muscle.
•  
• This is where decisions are made about the body,
• where the body becomes not its parts
• but the butcher's sacrament:
•  
• Eat, and be whole.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• The American Family Eats Pork
•  
• Each fork raises its own sliver of chop
• Rub pork with garlic
• to an American mouth
• Dredge in flour
• as the refrigerator murmurs a lament so constant
• Brown in heavy skillet
• no one hears it.
• Heat thoroughly to avoid disease
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• The Answer
•  
• The pig says nothing, but whines
• until the gunshot sucks the whine from its voice
• under yellow light staining the slop yard with every
• brilliance
• but illumination.
•  
• • ~ •
•  
• A Joke
•  
• A mosquito and a swine are on a boat
• after three days of drifting.
• Finally, the swine says,
•  
• You must look at me and think Ham or Tripe.
• Huff and puff. Trichinosis. Whatever.
• But me, I've been thinking about History.
•  
• The mosquito says,
•  
• Soieee.