Magrab, June Coleman

United States, (contemporary)

There’s a Pig Outside

  1. The waiter in here has a concussion from coming
  2. onto another guy’s woman  says she slipped him her number
  3. nothing he asked for but her boyfriend hit him over the head with a
  4. flashlight
  5. knocked him out for thirty minutes and he looks bad today Sunday
  6. and I say no wonder
  7. I didn’t see you Friday when did it happen he says Thursday night
  8. went to the hospital
  9. the next day my neck hurt from when I hit concrete steps and I think
  10. he really looks like shit
  11. thought he’d been in a car crash and he goes on about the heavy
  12. flashlight and all
  13. I can think of is Carrot the pig eating frozen yogurt outside this
  14. place
  15. it’s not every day one meets a slab of bacon intact slopping and
  16. burping off
  17. a spoon so I ask the woman the pig’s with is it full-grown she says
  18. he’s ten I comment on dry skin
  19. looks like your pig has dry skin she says yes pigs are like that I ask what do
  20. you do about it
  21. she says whatever  any good lubricant  while I’m blown away because the big  she calls him
  22. Carrot is snorting and grunting and I’m wondering what kind of a
  23. mess he’d make but she says
  24. he’s trained like a dog so I say what do you feed him besides yogurt she
  25. says chow pig chow and
  26. proceeds to have him sit stay shake a leg rewarding  him with a dog
  27. biscuit so I say I’ve heard
  28. pigs are good pets  she says I don’t recommend them and I wonder why
  29. did she keep Carrot
  30. all these years but guess it’s like any pet one’s responsible the
  31. moment one says
  32. look, look at that cute piglet and now she has a two-hundred-twenty-
  33. pound pig
  34. not hog hogs are fatter I read that in some article and I say I’m pretty
  35. repulsed by your pig
  36. she chuckles says she understands it’s like that whenever they come
  37. to town for treats
  38. and at that moment her girlfriend joins us drinking a cappuccino and
  39. offers some to Carrot
  40. the first woman says come on Babe you know Carrot doesn’t do well
  41. on caffeine
  42. and I’m thinking I’m pretty sophisticated but a big pig with sparse
  43. black hair dry skin and tiny
  44. hooves resembling high heeled shoes and some bozo with a
  45. concussion knocked out  that pig
  46. are just too much for one afternoon.

© June Coleman Magrab. The Breath of Parted Lips, Volume II. Sydney Lea, ed. CalvanKerry Press (2004).

About the Poet:

June Coleman Magrab (contemporary) is a U.S. poet who was born in NYC, NY, raised in San Francisco and now resides in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. Magrab has been a fellow at The MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and she was also a participant in the Frost Place Poetry Festival (1992-2005).

She has been published in the anthologies The Other Side of Sorrow (Hobblebush Books, 2006) and The Breath of Parted Lips, Volume II (CalvanKerry Press, 2004). Magrab’s work has also appeared in the journals Calapooya Collage, Caprice, Inky Blue, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, New York Quarterly, Scapegoat Review, SoMa Literary Review, Stirring, The Poet’s Touchstone and Wicked Alice.

Magrab is currently the Poetry Editor for the Scapegoat Review. [DES-03/12]

Additional information:

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.