United States, (b. 1970)
Bless the Feral Hog
…Saint Francis / put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch / blessings of earth
— Galway Kinnell, “St. Francis and the Sow”
The ‘Hog Apocalypse’ may finally be on the horizon.
— Texas Department of Agriculture, Commissioner Sid Miller
- I wasn’t bothered by the hogs. In fact,
- I welcomed the pack of them foraging in nearby brush,
- an antidote to my loneliness.
- At the Hill Country cabin, my companion was the voice
- of the radio newscaster I’d listen to afternoons in the parked car,
- doors flung open to the country breeze, to hogs
- dotting the landscape. Sid Miller is not the only one
- who’d call me a fool. If he has his way, farmers
- will lure swine with poison feed so they slowly, painfully
- bleed as their innards bubble up blue. I know
- the hogs cause damage; they scrape land bare,
- burrow holes deep and wide enough to hold a sleeping
- man. Wasn’t it enough to encourage hunters in helicopters
- to shoot from the sky? What if St. Francis
- put his hand on the hairy forehead
- of one of these sows? Or the creased, wide, shiny
- forehead of Sid? If the blessings of the earth
- were spoken into us, and we began remembering
- through our own thick length,
- from the top of our heads through our tired hearts,
- what would we find? The problem of the pigs
- began on a boat. The colonizer
- told the wild hog the loveliness of taking,
- of digging into the dirt with her snout, rooting up
- all she wants. And the sow remembered
- through her own heart about hunger. Her appetite
- streamed into fourteen mouths sucking at her teats,
- into writhing bodies she would nudge off, snorting
- go now, eat. Run in a pack and trample
- what you please. Eat every flowering thing.
Laura Van Prooyen told Willow Springs Magazine: “A few years ago, the Texas Dept. of Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, tried to make it legal for people to poison feral hogs to try to control the population. The poison promised a slow, terrible, painful death for these sentient creatures. This great idea came after allowing people to shoot feral hogs from helicopters (true story) failed to control the population. Meanwhile, I recalled Galway Kinnell’s romanticized poem about St. Francis and the Sow, and I wondered where these two ideas might meet. You see where the poem ended up.”
About the Poet:
Laura Beth Van Prooyen, United States, (b. 1970), is a poet, writer, editor and educator. She has over 20 years experience teaching poetry and writing in a variety of academic settings including: Dominican University, Henry Ford Academy: The Alameda School for Art + Design, Chicago Public Schools, Del Valle High School, and University of Illinois at Chicago. She also facilitated therapeutic writing sessions for soldiers with PTSD in an Intensive Outpatient Program for three years at Brook Army Medical Center.
Van Prooyen’s collections of poetry are Frances of the Wider Field (2021), Our House Was on Fire (2015) and Inkblot and Altar (2006). Her poems also have appeared in APR, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review among others.
Van Prooyen teaches in the low-residency MFA Creative Writing program at Miami University, and performs work from Frances of the Wider Field with Agarita Chamber Players. [DES-01/22]
Additional information:
- Laura Van Prooyen – https://lauravanprooyen.com/
- Laura Van Prooyen’s Next Page Press