Young, Kevin

United States, (b. 1970)

Ode to Pork

  1. I wouldn’t be here
  2. without you. Without you
  3. I’d be umpteen
  4. pounds lighter & a lot
  5. less alive. You stuck
  6. round my ribs even
  7. when I treated you like a dog
  8. dirty, I dare not eat.
  9. I know you’re the blues
  10. because loving you
  11. may kill me–but still you
  12. rock me down slow
  13. as hamhocks on the stove.
  14. Anyway you come
  15. fried, cubed, burnt
  16. to within one inch
  17. of your life I love. Babe,
  18. I revere your every
  19. Nickname—bacon, chitlin,
  20. crackling, sin.
  21. Some call you murder,
  22. shame’s stepsister–
  23. then dress you up
  24. & declare you white
  25. & healthy, but you always
  26. come back, sauced, to me.
  27. Adam himself gave up
  28. a rib to see yours
  29. piled pink beside him.
  30. Your heaven is the only one
  31. worth wanting–
  32. You keep me all night
  33. cursing your four-
  34. letter name, the next
  35. begging for you again.

© Kevin Young. Dear Darkness: Poems. New York: Knopf (2010).

Editor’s Note:

Here is an audio recording (1,885 KB) of Kevin Young reading ‘Ode to Pork.’

WHOLE HOG
In Memoriam Jake Adam York

  1.  
  2. It is heavy,
  3. a hog, you need
  4. to stay
  5.  
  6. up all night, nursing
  7. the fire like a beer,
  8. or rise early
  9.  
  10. like we did, that first time
  11. you taught me how
  12. to drag December
  13.  
  14. awake into flame,
  15. lighting pecan
  16. & hickory, passed
  17.  
  18. between cinder block
  19. & ash. Do you dig
  20. a pit? No,
  21.  
  22. we build one
  23. last house
  24. for the huge sow
  25.  
  26. who we know
  27. rooted & ranged
  28. the given ground.
  29.  
  30. Head on, scrubbed, split,
  31. the pig’s skin
  32. crackles, a communion
  33.  
  34. of it—no spit,
  35. just shoveling coals
  36. like a locomotive
  37.  
  38. engineer, boilerman,
  39. rounder—
  40. Casey Jones
  41.  
  42. mounted to his cabin
  43. & he took his farewell
  44. trip to the promised land—
  45.  
  46. the smoke everywhere
  47. like a prayer, clinging
  48. your clothes for days
  49.  
  50. we do not wish
  51. to wash away. To share
  52. the weight, to wear it—
  53.  
  54. to honor the creature
  55. by devouring it
  56. whole—we know she
  57.  
  58. would return
  59. the favor. He looked
  60. at his watch
  61.  
  62. & his watch
  63. was slow. Steam rises sweet
  64. among the maples
  65.  
  66. & bamboo. How
  67. do you know
  68. it is done? The hog
  69.  
  70. will tell you.
  71.  
  72. Christmas Eve Day 2012

© Kevin Young. Gravy #50: Winter Reading. The quarterly journal of the Southern Foodways Alliance, December 23, 2013.

About the Poet:

Kevin Lowell Young, United States, (b. 1970) is a poet, professor, editor and literary critic. He is the Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, newly named a National Historic Landmark, and Poetry Editor of the New Yorker.

Young is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, most recently Brown (2018), a New York Times Notable Book; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015 (Knopf, 2016), longlisted for the National Book Award; and Book of Hours (Knopf, 2014), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize for Poetry from the Academy of American Poets.

Young has served as Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory’s Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. His collection Jelly Roll: a blues (Knopf, 2003) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. [DES-12/18]

Additional information: