Edson, Russell

United States, (b. 1935)

A Performance At Hog Theater

  1. There was once a hog theater where hogs performed
  2. as men, had men been hogs.
  3.  
  4. One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has
  5. found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog
  6. which is in the field and which has found the mouse,
  7. which I am performing as my contribution to the
  8. performer’s art.
  9.  
  10. Oh let’s just be hogs, cried an old hog.
  11.  
  12. And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying,
  13. only hogs, only
  14.  
  15. hogs…

© Russell Edson
The Tunnel: Selected Poems. Field Editions, Oberlin College Press, 1994.

About the Poet

Russell Edson (b. 1935), US poet. He writes exclusively in the prose poetry format, often having a seemingly innocuous situation undergo an unlikely and uncanny metamorphoses. [DES-6/03]

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