Barker, Wendy

United States, (b. 1942)

Drive to the Pig Farm

  1. Past clipped yards.
  2. Nasturtiums hang over slat fences.
  3. Fields rise out of wounds left by the road.
  4. Jagged places, healed with lupine, poppies.
  5.  
  6. Drive toward he hills.
  7. Waves of wild carrot, yellow clumps
  8. of wild mustard. Drive past all these,
  9. past the small purple-bladed flower
  10.  
  11. opening in the shade of live oaks.
  12. Past the farm with red stables.
  13. Round the final turn
  14. mud reaches to the horizon.
  15.  
  16. Hills of mud piled with pigs.
  17. Hundreds of pigs, sprawled
  18. on their sides, fat haunches limp,
  19. stiff blond hairs rising
  20.  
  21. over the flesh like sparse fur.
  22. One hunches dog-like,
  23. two-toed foot under its belly.
  24. Their feet mince through the stink, old
  25.  
  26. potatoes scattered like stones
  27. over the ground.
  28. They lift wet noses over barbed wire,
  29. grunt quietly as we scratch their backs.
  30.  
  31. Swarms of pigs, half in,
  32. half out of warm brown mud.
  33. Noises from somewhere under their throats,
  34. insistent as the buzz
  35.  
  36. of flies circling their eyes.
  37. We turn from the fence, pull shut
  38. the doors of the car and drive,
  39. drive back to the rows
  40.  
  41. of hourse, pastel colors,
  42. pruned roses climbing the walls.

© Wendy Barker. Winter Chickens and other poems. San Antonio, TX: Corona Publishing. Co. (1990).

About the Poet:

Wendy Barker, United States, (b. 1942), is a poet educator and translator. She is Poet-in-Residence and the Pearl LeWinn Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she has taught since 1982. She regularly teaches senior-level and graduate creative writing workshops.

Her translations, with Saranindranath Tagore, of Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore received the Sourette Diehl Fraser Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. [DES-10/21]

Additional information:

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