United States, (b. 1958)
Spring
- Yesterday the man brought the new piglet. He parked his truck in the driveway and, seeing me through the doorway of our house, called out: “Do you have a piece of cloth I could use? The pig shat and I can’t grab hold because it’s slippery.”
- I went outside and pointed to an empty animal food sack. “Will that do?” “Yes,” he said, and wiped his hand on it then clamped his hand over the piglet’s curly tail, grabbed a pink, sensitive-looking ear and hoisted it over the side of the truck. He carried it that way for two hundred yards. I kept thinking the pig would slip from his grip but it didn’t.
- The piglet went directly to the much larger sow. She didn’t flinch or run away but stood still, knee-deep in slops. The sun was warmer than it’d been in months. The little pig nuzzled her tail and each of her trotters, and eventually her snout. They ate side by side, slurping. Later, we found them lying together as the sun went down, the piglets snuggled into her belly, her head against his.
© Anne Germanacos. In the Time of the Girls. Rochester, NY: BOA Editions (2010).
About the Poet:
Anne Germanacos, United States, (b. 1958), is a poet, essayist, educator and writer. Together with her husband, Nick Germanacos, she ran the Ithaka Cultural Studies Program on the islands of Kalymnos and Crete, and taught writing, literature, and Modern Greek.
She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has studied Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish. Her work has appeared in over sixty literary reviews and anthologies, including Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2009. She and her husband live in San Francisco and on the Greek island of Crete.[DES-01/22]