Givhan, Jennifer

Miracle of the River Pig
 
 — behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

1. *
2.  
3. Animals (like women) are cast in leading roles in plays of superstition. One story, if an observant countryman is right, has as plot the alleged inability of a pig to swim. Her sharp trotters swing — so the story goes — in circular motion in the water till she cuts her own throat. This, the countryman cheerfully claims, did not happen to a sow who, awaiting her litter and finding her sty flooded, patiently swam round it unharmed until rescue arrived.
4.  
5. *
6.  
7. Either help me —
8. or cast me out, Sweet Jesus.
9.  
10. *
11.  
12. I met him coming from the tombs.
13. Violent men always turn me mealy-squealy;
14. the rack & screw
15. bring on the gristle in pristine —
16. vaulted castles, brined swine
17. unwedding my mistake.
19. Call the priests, I’m burning,
20. I’m evaporating,
21. I’m pouring unsanctioned milk from unleashed tits —
23. I’m a sin, a stain, a bray in the hay,
24. send some boys to piss on me,
25. make me pay —
27. Baptize me till
28. I’m clean & free & with you wholly
29. holy
30. chicharrones
31. chomp me between your fucking teeth —
32.  
33. *
34.  
35. My almost-mother-in-law served me pigs’ feet on a plate —
36. her son, my insanity,
37. my love — y mi diablo
38. & I, his evil porcine brewing
39. in the sopa de pat
40. slow-simmered pigs’ feet soup.
41.  
42. *
43.  
44. Years ago a young porker fell into an old bramble-covered well. The water level was, I don’t know, some 10 ft. down, the water deep. It took us half an hour to borrow a ladder and come back. She was still swimming round and round. The well mouth was too narrow for a man to go down there after all, but then we saw that she-pig had her forelegs over one rung, her snout under the rung above. We raised that ladder up slow. The pig held on until she reached the top and we hefted her up. Then she shook herself, grunted, and trotted off—her throat unscratched and utterly unperturbed.
45.  
46. *
47.  
48. The boy I met at the swine barns
49. fucked me in the piss-yellow straw.
50. I sucked a dick in the front seat while the pigs barked
51. near the dump on the northern tip of town.
52. There’s the cemetery where I will not be buried.
53. (Will my ex-fisher king be scattered at sea? —
54. I will not join him, I, ex-fisher queen, ex voto,
55. ex-girlfriend, ex madness).
56. My sweet rolls,
57. color me a memory, an unlit candle,
58. brindle me backward,
59. toward the bordertown. Cane me. Sweet tea me.
60. At the fairgrounds,
61. some little piggy’s losing her virginity,
62. her sanity,
63. strung in a bedroom doorway.
64.  
65. *
66.  
67. — Selves like iridescent, shining, speckled
68. shit in the Río Nuevo
69. frothy foaming stinking desert river
70. desert in the new world —
71. how old were you? fifteen & blessed as
72. Santa María,
73. I’m that lucky pig in the river —
74. cut my trotters,
75. strike my blue-butt,
76. handle me,
77. sell me at auction,
78. devour me.
79.  
80. *
81.  
82. Bruja y de la chingada
83. slap my ass
84. pinch my nipples
85. flay my skin, dip me in chile & eat me
86. a treat
87. pickled
88. even better
89. pigs in a blanket —
91. swine-swindled,
93. this little piggy went down to the river to drown her baby
94. this little piggy never came home
95. this little piggy slit her own throat, a fish-hooked embryo
96.  
97. *
98.  
99. Down the river did glide with wind and with tide,
100. A pig with vast celerity;
101. And the devil looked wise as he saw how the while,
102. It cut its own throat.
103.  
104. *
105.  
106. His mother eats pigs’ feet
107. dried & deep fried
108. con chile & limón —
109. my demons in them.
110.  
111. *
112.  
113. Another example of a swimming pig was witnessed in 1946 during the testing of the Atom-bomb on the Bikini atoll. A total of 3,352 animals were placed around the test site to gauge the effects on creatures at various proximities to the detonation. Pig 311 was seen swimming calmly in the sea after the explosion and was duly rounded up and sent to Washington’s Zoological Park where she led a normal existence with no outward signs of radiation sickness except infertility.
114.  
115. *
116.  
117. Mom bought my white communion dress,
118. wafer on my tongue,
119. uneven socks & curlicues like piggy tails,
120. white papal smoke
121. up the river channel to little caves,
122. white, potbellied river stones —
123. I’ve been re-formed from a failed levee,
124. a desert flood that re-created the Salton Sea,
125. its unnatural river flow, its farming runoff, leaky
126. discharge, dumping
127. wastewater stench —
128. I’m on the fence, I’m border trash, I’m a glowing fish a radiant transgression,
129. I’m unsanitary,
130. insanity
131. little piggy swimming
132. & the devil inside me.
133.  
134. *
135.  
136. There was no sign of any kind that its throat had been cut. In fact, it was quite lively when being returned to its pen.
137.  
138. *
139.  
140. Maquiladoras y panaderias (how sweet my belly, my pan dulce)
141. pay tribute to my glove & aprons, discarded tires, trash, dead animal channels,
142. sweet little piggy, swim —
143. blow foam into Calexico streets & downtown, mosquito my open windows,
144. boil my wounds
145. (I’m a disease)
146. — in my potbelly
147. simmer me
148. sex me
149. leave me
150. to summer heat
151. singe me to my pen —