United States, (b. 1960)
Pigs Watered in Heat Wave
- To catch what mustn’t touch the sty’s dried soil
- they fight for the hose in hoarse, violent screams,
- gasping, more than adolescent jostle —
- their heads lifting snouts like shaking saucers.
- Then the hush when each pig owns a shower
- and all they’ve rolled in courses down their backs,
- back into what they’ll roll in late tonight,
- and the black and white bodies start to shine.
- Ears back, pink lips mouthing the drops and spray,
- wet eyes shut among the swaying shoulders,
- these funnels lean to the source, as if the sun,
- dropping, were still a threat. In red dust,
- the shit covered runt spreads his hooves,
- braces far from the clear jet. Waiting.
About the Poet:
Ralph Sneeden, United States, (b. 1960), is a poet educator. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (BA) , Middlebury College (MA) and Warren Wilson College (MFA). He has taught high school English since
1983 in Massachusetts, Illinois and presently at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire 1995-2022 where he was the B. Rodney Marriott Chair in the Humanities.
Sneeden’s work has appeared in The New Republic, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, The Adroit Journal, The American Poetry Review, The Common, Ecotone, Harvard Review, New England Review, The New Republic and many others. His work has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize and anthologized in The Second Set: The Jazz Poetry Anthology Vol. 2, Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets and Poet Showcase: An Anthology of New Hampshire Poets. [DES-07/22]
Additional information:
- More about Ralph Sneeden at: https://www.ralphsneeden.com/
- Ralph Sneeden’s faculty page at Exeter Academy: https://staging.exeter.edu/faculty/ralph-g-sneeden