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Pulling A Pig’s Tail


ISSUE:  Winter 1989
The feel of it was hairy and coarse
like new rope in Johnson’s
hardware store but I never touched
it or any part of a pig
until that day my father took me
where the farm was, woods
a kind of green stillness, the hanging
leaves from so much rain
I guess—it felt as if I was upside
down underwater trying to swim
for my life. The farmer, Uncle Bern,
said I could have one
if I could catch it. A little one
looked easy, about my size,
wary because he must have been unsure
of many things and hungry
because the small lives always are so
I chased him until foul mud
was all over me, the big men crying.
My father said it was just
that funny like a kind of gray soul
testing to see I wanted
badly enough to catch myself, black
eyes not seeming to watch,
on the horizon sort of—the weird way
I talked to it and finally it
listened to something and I took
hold, pulled, held, grunting,
digging my sneakers into the shit. Why
wouldn’t he bite me? I almost
got that thing straight but then saw
what wasn’t right, the hurt.
Let go. I didn’t say I was thinking
about school that was over
that summer, the teacher that yanked
my hair, who said she’d see
my life was straightened out, Lord.
I couldn’t tell my father
a pig’s tail burns you like all things
of beauty. I loved my school
until that wet day when it let me go.

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