United States, (1937-2020)
We Had Seen a Pig
- 1
- One man held the huge pig down
- and the other stuck an ice pick
- into the jugular, which is when
- we started to pay attention.
- The blood rose ten feet with force
- while the sow swam on its back
- as if to cut its own neck.
- Its fatty back smacked the slippery
- cement while the assassins shuffled
- to keep their balance, and the bloody
- fountain rose and fell back and rose
- less and less high, until
- the red plume reentered the pig
- at the neck, and the belly collapsed
- and the pig face went dull.
- 2
- I knew the pig
- was the butcher’s, whose game
- lived mainly behind our garage.
- Sometimes turkeys, always
- roosters and sheep. Once the windmill
- turned two days without stopping.
- The butcher would walk in his apron
- straight for the victim. The others
- would scratch and babble
- and get in the way.
- Then the butcher would lead the animal
- to the back door of his shop,
- stopping to kill it on a stump.
- It was always evening, after closing.
- The sea breeze would be rising,
- cloaking the hour in brine.
- 3
- The pig we saw slaughtered
- was more than twice anything
- shut up in the patch
- we trespassed to make havoc.
- Since the butcher was Italian,
- not Jewish, that would be his pig.
- Like the barber who carried
- a cigar box of bets
- to the stationery store, like
- the Greek who made sweets
- and hid Greek illegals,
- immigrant “submarines,”
- the butcher had a business, his
- business, by which he took
- from our hands the cleaver and serrated
- knife for the guts,
- and gave us back in butcher paper
- and outer layers of brown wrapping
- our lives for their cries.
- 4
- Hung up to drain, the great pig,
- hacked into portions,
- looked like a puzzle
- we could put together in the freezer
- to make a picture of
- a pig of course, a map, clothes or other things
- when we looked.
© Marvin Bell. Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press (2000).
Sounds of the Resurrected Dead Man’s Footsteps (#I3)
- I. That Swine Are Intelligent
- Was three hundred pounds and hard to turn over.
- The stubby legs locked, askew, and the feet biting the ground.
- The refusal.
- The ice pick through the keyhole of the throat.
- The artery unlocked.
- Up rose the red fountain and fell back by stages.
- The pig deflated, the calm overcoming, the silence broken.
- Farm boys name them.
- They come when called, have been known to throw the switch.
- The electric fence goes down, and no one around but a pig.
- 2. That Ducks Are Dumb
- Their paddle-wheel effort under the surface.
- The short necks that beat the swans to the bread.
- Their tendency to trample one another for food.
- And the eggs of no concern.
- Lacking the Boy Scout ability of the gull, the heft of the goose.
- Jealous of others but made to flock together.
- Then they rise up in a vee to look elsewhere.
- Stretching the summer.
- Easily decoyed, prey to the group, joined in cacophony.
- Ponderous mudders, oblivious to the shoreline.
© Marvin Bell. Nightworks: Poems 1962-2000. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press (2000).
About the Poet:
Marvin Hartley Bell, United States, (1937-2020), was a poet and educator who was named the first Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa in 2000. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Alfred University, his master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Bell was the author of more than 20 books of poetry, including The Book of the Dead Man (Copper Canyon Press, 1994), Ardor: The Book of the Dead Man, Vol. 2 (Copper Canyon Press, 1997), Nightworks: Poems 1962–2000 (Copper Canyon Press, 2000), Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), and Vertigo: The Living Dead Man Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). [DES-10/21]