United States, (b. 1970)
Ode to Pork
- I wouldn’t be here
- without you. Without you
- I’d be umpteen
- pounds lighter & a lot
- less alive. You stuck
- round my ribs even
- when I treated you like a dog
- dirty, I dare not eat.
- I know you’re the blues
- because loving you
- may kill me–but still you
- rock me down slow
- as hamhocks on the stove.
- Anyway you come
- fried, cubed, burnt
- to within one inch
- of your life I love. Babe,
- I revere your every
- Nickname—bacon, chitlin,
- crackling, sin.
- Some call you murder,
- shame’s stepsister–
- then dress you up
- & declare you white
- & healthy, but you always
- come back, sauced, to me.
- Adam himself gave up
- a rib to see yours
- piled pink beside him.
- Your heaven is the only one
- worth wanting–
- You keep me all night
- cursing your four-
- letter name, the next
- begging for you again.
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
- It is heavy,
- a hog, you need
- to stay
- up all night, nursing
- the fire like a beer,
- or rise early
- like we did, that first time
- you taught me how
- to drag December
- awake into flame,
- lighting pecan
- & hickory, passed
- between cinder block
- & ash. Do you dig
- a pit? No,
- we build one
- last house
- for the huge sow
- who we know
- rooted & ranged
- the given ground.
- Head on, scrubbed, split,
- the pig’s skin
- crackles, a communion
- of it—no spit,
- just shoveling coals
- like a locomotive
- engineer, boilerman,
- rounder—
- Casey Jones
- mounted to his cabin
- & he took his farewell
- trip to the promised land—
- the smoke everywhere
- like a prayer, clinging
- your clothes for days
- we do not wish
- to wash away. To share
- the weight, to wear it—
- to honor the creature
- by devouring it
- whole—we know she
- would return
- the favor. He looked
- at his watch
- & his watch
- was slow. Steam rises sweet
- among the maples
- & bamboo. How
- do you know
- it is done? The hog
- will tell you.
- Christmas Eve Day 2012
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]