Atkinson, Michael

Teaching Pigs to Pray

1. She’s washing last night’s dishes in the sink
2. in slippers, housecoat.
3. Looking out the morning-fed window at the street
4. as the sun first strikes.
5. Her husband, a car salesman, at work, two children,
6. both boys, at school.
7. On TV, an old black man on his farm in Bentonia,
8. Mississippi.
9. He is teaching his pigs to pray before they eat,
10. telling us how.
11. They only pause for a moment, naturally, before
12. chowing down.
13. Her hands are growing leathery around their thin
14. bones and knuckles.
15. She is turning over slowly, like a roast, an idea,
16. a way of looking.
17. She is imagining moving over land like a spirit
18. moving over life.
19. There is quiet with her, behind her, closer and
20. warmer than men.
21. The touch of sponge to wooden spoon brings on
22. a shiver.
23. There is a thing in her belly that closes
24. on happiness.
25. The being once a child is enough to lie to her
26. about living.
27. It is lying today, too, to her children, and nothing
28. can be done.
29. Her slouch helps her heavy breasts hang lower
30. on her.
31. She cannot kill and bury the dog like she thought
32. of doing.
33. Tell the boys it ran away; it wouldn’t change her,
34. or anything, enough.
35. She wants to seduce the telephone repairman when
36. he comes instead.
37. Or better, the young paperboy, who’d very likely
38. tremble in it.
39. A need is known, and echoed, but its seized
40. clockwork is not.
41. She remembers seeing at eight the primal scene,
42. her parents joined, bucking.
43. She thought then there is too much in life to ever
44. see at one time.
45. Seeing it all now, out the kitchen window, she wondered
46. if she could leave.
47. In that bed, her father was writhing, sensing
48. something deeper.
49. What that was has been a mystery, in different
50. ways, ever since.
51. Whatever it was meant to be, she could never find it,
52. hold it in her hand.
53. They sounded like a flat iron shutter slamming
54. open in the rain.
55. She begins to talk aloud, to her long dead mother,
56. saying  mother, saying  please.