Three Poems

Transgenic Pigs

The oink is a fugue, baconian
and philosophical. By a corn-cob moon
they snaffle, silvery-hulled backs
adrift & dolphin-arched in the mire. A
litter of stars in the laboratory-bright
sky. ' PUT SOME PORK ON YOUR FORK'
intones the television commercial. O but
these are no bristle & foam flecked
boars of Arcadian Days, brutally twist-
ing on some Danaan spear-haft, in a
flying rage tearing at ilex roots, or
blasting marble shards with iron-tough tusks.
These are the sleek-lined, chrome-bright
& delicate trottered. These with a call
soothing as a computer bleat, ears
alert as mobile-phones, flesh pliable as
an artichoke, temperament cool as a cold
cut. These, the upwardly mobile,
porcine delicacies, models of dinner-table
decorum. Designer-label pigs, feted,
wined & dined exemplars of taste, accepted
in the most refined of social circles.
These are the well appointed pigs replete,
with a privately funded education bred O
so exclusively for the Export Drive.

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Oblations

Island nations of the colder lattitudes
breed alluvial poets, it is believed, who meet
once yearly under friendly viaducts to
talk of river shingle, boulder, and water birds.

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Myth and Mariolatry

At a small village not
far from Manila, in the house
of armaments & munitions,
in a house of grenades &
ammunition, the plaster
statue of the Virgin Mary as
humble as a trademark,
stands splashed in carmine
tears like some peasant
shot on a quiet morning bearing
water from the creek.
The hovels strewn about
the hills are so many broken
boxes. The sun is spinning
clockwise for hope. One
cloud out of nowhere & then a
drape of blue that might
be the sky. The gathering of
people is more impressive
than a food drop. They come
at the appointed hour when
the boy who serves as
runner to the Beautiful Lady
arrives, breathless, with
the Word. Occasionally,
the statue weeps paint-fresh
tears. They will leave
once faith is gathered in
abundance like so many wild
flowers off the nearest mountain
slope. Here under a glass
blown moon, a cool wind
shall leave this place sacred.

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