Porkopolis

Pig Family Game

• I was the sow, she was the boar.
• Six kitchen chairs for a pen.
• We put on winter coats and grunted.
• I lay on my side, coat open
• and birthed six pigs.
• Only one was runted. Six squirts,
• minimal pain, minimal swelling.
• I peeled the after-births,
• then nudged the piglets into standing.
• Boar was in a corner plowing up edible roots.
• Sow ate the placentas.
• The piglets yanked and nuzzled her teats.
• Sow-milk ran, her ovaries tingled.
• There was froth on her mouth,
• in the black juicy loam of the pen.

The Sow's Head
(for James Wright)

• The day was like pewter.
• The gray lake a coat
• open at the throat. The border
• of trees — frayed mantle collar,
• hairs, evergreen. The sky dun.
• Chilling breeze. Hem of winter.
•  
• I passed the iodine-colored brook
• hard waters open
• the weight of the sow's head
• an ache from shoulder to waist,
• the crook of my elbow numb;
• juices seeping through
• the wrapping paper.
•  
• I was wrong to take it.
• There were meals in it.
• I would, dad said, assist
• with slaughter, scrape off
• hair, gather blood.
• I would be whipped for
• thieving from the dogs.
•  
• I crossed ice
• which shivered, shone.
• No heads below, none;
• nor groans — only water, deep,
• and the mud beds of frogs asleep;
• not a bush quivered,
• not a stone. Snow.
• Old snow had formed
• hard swirls bone
• and planes with
• windwhipped ridges
• for walking upon;
• and beneath, in the deep,
• bass quiet, perch whirling
• fins, bluegills, sunfish,
• dim-eyed, soaking heat.
• Mud would be soft down there,
• rich, tan, deeper than a man:
• silt of leeches, leaves
• tumbling in from trees,
• loon feces, mulch-thick,
• mudquick, and lignite forming,
• cells rumbling, rifts.
•  
• I knelt, chopped through
• layers of ice until
• water, pus, spilled up
• choking the wound. I widened
• the gash. Tchick! Tchick!
• Chips of ice flew.
• Water blew from the hole,
• the well, a whale, expired.
• My knees were stuck to the ice.
•  
• I unwrapped the paper.
• The head appeared
• shorn of its beard,
• its ears stood up, the snout
• with its tinkertoy holes
• held blood, its eyes were shut,
• there was grain on its mouth.
•  
• It sat on the snow
• as though it lived below,
• leviathan come for air
• limbs and hulk
• dumb to my presence there.
•  
• I raised the sow's head
• by its ears. I held it
• over the hole, let it go,
• watched it sink, a glimmer
• of pink, a wink of a match
• an eyelid...
•  
• A bone in my side beat.