walking among the hogs.

outside of Quitman Ga. July 2014/

 

 

 

even the eyelets

are, nevertheless still.

As I crossed the pasture

yielding

of hard wood and stink.

 

Puddles of mud and meat

cling like breeding soup.

I am the prisoner bearing nothing

 

but standing still. Attached

by a sterile strap. Thru some

muted calm, overwrought from

among the heavy massed souls/

 

the largest male takes

luxury with my balls. And

not a sudden pain

 

or bustling line descending.

But corn and slop and mustard

green. Legend has it

 

that the farmer in the next town

disappeared in the thread yard liquid,

only his suspender found.

 

So I engrave by means of dots

and misty flicks to the

garrulous July sky,  prayer and

wort and value to engrave;

 

not here.

Reviews

[Tree]

No, you can't go out like that. Not there.
I think life on the farm should be experienced by everyone, so that we all may have a better appreciation for how our food makes it into our homes. I've spent long summers on ranches, and there is no danger like playing chicken with bulls in their meadows or in their enclosures, and the pigs? don't fall into the slop, and don't get injured or die anywhere near them; especially, when they're hungry. It's all true.

Well constructed piece, d. And the tone of this was eerily mono-tone, which gave this reader the impetuous to listen, and beware.


Diego

[jacob erin-cilberto]

scary what could happen...i was once (i thought) trapped in a pasture with a good many holsteins when i was in vermont...i was surrounded...i had that feeling that i would go missing...that they would just envelop me and i would be gone...and the looks in their eyes...so haunting...i was afraid...but i tried to be calm, and found a path to get out of there...the cows never flinched a muscle...just watched, as cows do, and continued to graze.
sometimes we imagine the worst...the world makes us that way...and yet there are those who are only peaceful...cows are among the most...and i have always felt a kinship with them..always loved them...
that day i learned a lesson.

great poem here, dana.

i was in slop, feeling the fear. then realized...all for naught.

[W.k.kortas]

It is easy for those who've never experienced it (and the percentage of folks who fall in that category rising all the time) to have a vision of farm life, especially the rural single-family Green Acres version of it, as some blissful idyll--but the fact of the matter is that life can be a damned dangerous one (at the very least it puts you face-to-face with its grittiest elements), what with heedless animals (and it's not unheard of for someone to get trapped under several hundred pounds of sow and drown in that foul muck) and ancient, malevolent machinery. You've got that down here quite nicely, your piece not holding with some Currier-and-Ives pastel soppiness, and what's more done it with a matter-of-fact tone, emphasizing that this is how things are, the is that is.

[Emily B]

you took me with you, georgia in july is something everyone ought to experience at least once