Nezhukumatathil, Aimee

United States, (b. 1974)

Hell Pig

  1. To keep me from staying out late at night,
  2. my mother warned of the Hell Pig. Black and full
  3.  
  4. of hot drool, eyes the color of a lung—it’d follow me
  5. home if I stayed past my curfew. How to tell my friends
  6.  
  7. to press Pause in the middle of a video, say their good-byes
  8. while I shuffled up the stairs and into my father’s waiting
  9.  
  10. blue car? How to explain this to my dates, whisper
  11. why we could not finish this dance? It’s not like the pig
  12.  
  13. had any special powers or could take a tiny bite
  14. from my leg—only assurances that it was simply
  15.  
  16. scandal to be followed home. When my date and I
  17. pull into my driveway and dim the lights, we take
  18.  
  19. care to make all the small noises that get made
  20. in times like these even smaller: squeaks in the seats,
  21.  
  22. a slow spin of the radio dial, the silver click of my belt.
  23. Too late. A single black hair flickers awake the ear
  24.  
  25. of the dark animal waiting for me at the end of the walk.
  26. My fumbling of keys and various straps a wild dance
  27.  
  28. to the door—the pig grunting in tune to each hurried step, each
  29. of his wet breaths puffing into tiny clouds, a small storm brewing.

© Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Miracle Fruit: poems. Dorset, VT: Tupelo Press (2003).

About the Poet:

Aimee Nezhukumatathil, United States, (b. 1974), is a poet and educator. She earned her BA and MFA from the Ohio State University and was a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of four books of poetry.

Her honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pushcart Prize. Nezhukumatathil was also the 2016-17 Grisham writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi, where she is currently a professor of English in the MFA program. [DES-08/19]

Additional information: