Quite Intelligent Pigs

After my wife died I couldn't bear to keep Marsha,
her pig. They can learn to mimic their owners
and the memories were too painful.

Marsha was in a playful mood as I wrestled
her towards the barn, she snuffled my calves,
clipped my ankles with her cutlass incisors.

Even the sight of Exhibit A, the cleaver, didn't spell
it out for her. It was the gambrel that did it, rows of empty
hooks
looking for a purpose. As she hung, split from neck to belly

like an unzipped jacket, bleeding into a bucket,
singing badly about the way it hurt, I considered
the time she'd dug herself out of her pen, unlocked

the back door, found her way to the trot-in-wardrobe,
got trussed up in an Ascot hat, two pairs of heels
and headed out on the town, looking for someone to smooch.

I sold Marsha - loin, shoulder, ribs and all - but I still
can't shake the memory of my wife's death-bed expression
after I found her, trough-deep, in a shepherd's crotch.