Dubie, Norman

United States, (b. 1945)

The Blue Hog

  1. I didn’t have to buy the acid.
  2. I found it in an old battery in the barn
  3. Where the cows make sea noises
  4. And the cobwebs are plated gold.
  5. There were packets of birdseed, white floats
  6. Of cork, turpentine, and an old black fishline
  7. Which shouldn’t have worked but did.
  8. All of it a sin for the taking —
  9. I chose the acid for its smoke
  10. And the fishline to tie around my toe
  11. To remind me of the smoke.
  12. I threw the rotten apples into the yard
  13. And the blue hog charged.
  14. He was unpardonable, having
  15. Killed my sister’s child. John couldn’t
  16. Butcher him — to eat that hog
  17. Would be to eat the child.
  18. I poured the acid into pink Christmas bulbs
  19. And sewed them into the hollowed apples.
  20. I put them out into the sun to soften.
  21. The hog swallowed them whole like smoke.
  22. By the time he looked under himself
  23. He was already broke. My long dress shook.
  24. He stopped to give me a look,
  25. And then ran straight at the barn.
  26. His head and shoulders passed through the boards.
  27. The horse inside
  28. Had a hissing fit over him. Nobody
  29. Has ridden that horse since
  30. Except for the devil
  31. Who’s said to still be in the district.

© Norman Dubie. The Mercy Seat: Collected and New Poems 1967-2001. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press (2005).

The Obscure
For my grandfather

  1. It’s the poor first light of the morning.
  2. The woman still sleeps in her unheated room.
  3. The man in his nightshirt stands
  4. In the kitchen burning
  5. Dry sunflower-stalks in the open stove.
  6. There’s not a single lamp working.
  7. The orange light from the stove
  8. Shows just the things in the far corner.
  9.  
  10. Outside the window it is still snowing.
  11.  
  12. The harvest is finished. The time has come
  13. For killing the pig.
  14. They have been starving him for a week;
  15. Yesterday, emptying him completely
  16. With a wet portion of barleymeal.
  17. The pig is hungry and squeals in his corner
  18. By the garden.
  19.  
  20. The man has dressed in an old canvas coat. He stands inside the branch-fence Beside the sty, and with a broom sweeps
  21. A clearing in the snow.
  22. He lays out the knives, the rope
  23. And a black stool.
  24.  
  25. Birds stream from the tree above him.
  26.  
  27. The pig is stuck in the windpipe, he hangs
  28. By the rope from the tree, and upside-down
  29. Spins slowly above the stool,
  30. His eyes never leave this man
  31. Who brought him so many warm vegetables.
  32.  
  33. The man’s thoughts never leave the woman
  34. Who is still sleeping up in the house.
  35. She walked through the woods in the snow
  36. For most of the evening.
  37. For the second night In their lives she wouldn’t be touched
  38. By him.
  39.  
  40. The pig is ready for the scalding. He has
  41. Never before been this heated and pink.
  42. A high window opens in the house.
  43. Icicles fall From the windowsill. The woman looks out
  44. Opening her eyes to the bright snow:
  45. The pig hangs in the tree like an ornament of wax
  46. Stuck with a few red jewels, she had not
  47. Been warned about the killing at all;
  48. There’s her scream and then
  49. Just a silence leaving the man to himself,
  50.  
  51. To little else but the thought
  52. That her breasts filled the window like a mouth.

© Norman Dubie. The American Poetry Review. vol. 4, No. 5, September/October (1975). https://aprweb.org/

Nimrod & the Flying Pig

  1. 1.
  2. The king was burning the tall grasses
  3. to market an exhaust, a gate
  4. animals would spring from, Nimrod’s
  5. archers dropping them in air,
  6. in service to the autumn banquet.
  7.  
  8. It felt nearly a winter’s day and the king
  9. looked into the black smoke of the sky
  10. while a green flying sow
  11. passed wildly overhead detailing
  12. to the king that he was shameless
  13. and truly cursed among men.
  14.  
  15. 2.
  16. This pig threw this king off his need
  17. for a harvest mead. He returned
  18. a large cart full of grapes and wheat
  19. to his old toothless mother
  20.  
  21. 3.
  22. who he had imprisoned months earlier
  23. somewhere in the southern swamp.
  24.  
  25. 4.
  26. Nimrod began to fast. He shaved
  27. his head and snorted myrrh with prayers.
  28. Then the pig flew over again, over
  29. Nimrod’s bath house
  30. which was open to sky.
  31.  
  32. The pig told the king once more
  33. that essentially
  34. he was doomed beyond remedy,
  35. more than anyone who’d lived in recorded history.
  36. (This limitation, its specificity
  37. with reference to time emboldened
  38. Nimrod who reached instantly for his bow, piercing
  39. mortally the pig’s throat
  40. with a long yellow arrow of pine wood.)
  41.  
  42. 5.
  43. From that day forward the king
  44. lived in perfect happiness
  45. far into old age
  46. and was blessed with six sons
  47. who like their father were also cruel
  48. beyond definition.
  49.  
  50. The king said he was individually
  51. charmed among men. Reports,
  52. in fact, insist that his mother is still
  53. living in a suburb of Annapolis—
  54.  
  55. ‘flying pig’ is N.S.A.
  56. code for something you’d seriously
  57. rather not know. Now,
  58.  
  59. read our poem to its conclusion
  60. but never tell a single living soul
  61. of your exposure to it.
  62.  
  63. Oh, and
  64. the pig’s name was Protobus.
  65.  
  66. Protobus is an anagram
  67. of Hamlet. Thelma is an anagram
  68. of Hamlet. Pity the poor pig.
  69. Poor all of us.

© Norman Dubie. Robert Schuman Is Mad Again. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press (2019).

About the Poet:

Norman Dubie, United States, (b. 1945), is a poet and educator. Dubie accepted a position there to Arizona State University in 1975 and has worked there ever since, currently serving as the Regents Professor of English. He is married to poet Pamela Stewart.

He is the author of more than twenty-seven collections of poetry and his works have appeared in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Paris Review, FIELD, Narrative, The American Poetry Review, The Fiddlehead, Blackbird, Antaeus and others. His work has been translated into 30 languages.

Dubie has received the Bess Hokin Prize from the Poetry Foundation and the 2002 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry and 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize. He also received fellowships and grants from the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

His many collections of poetry include Robert Schumann is Mad Again (2019); Quotations of Bone (2015), The Volcano (2010); The Insomniac Liar of Topo (2007); Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum (2004); The Mercy Seat (2001); and The Everlastings (1980). [DES-01/22]

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