The Sow Speaks to Noah

& what should I think of this, Mercy in a near month

languishing on a boat gone nowhere?

²The tusk & musk of livestock, gassy camels, chickens

that flick wet flecks of shit, giraffes & they long necks forever

knockin’ somebody flat on they asses—

³Never mind the sheep bleatin’ all night. & that

somebody stay watchin’ me piss, eat, or sleep, remindin’ me

that I’m the voice of a generation—

⁴As if that should make me humble. As if that might

make me forget that the only sky you’ve given me is a puddle

snagged on the sharp edge of candlelight.

2 It can’t be a journey that takes you from home & never gives

you back—

²Is it a gift that I’ve survived to send my kids to

slaughter? Better home is the mouth of their mother.

³Yes, I will eat my children before I let their buttocks

butter into fatback—better to boar, gore through the neck’s soft

meat. Unseed my children, chestnuts rendered free, their spirits

you can’t digest.

3 & this ain’t the last flood, Noah.

Your generations drown my kin in white noise daily.

²But did you know a pig can swim for miles if it gotta?

³& I breed often, turn my whole ass out to open ocean,

kick a tremolo of waves behind—

my whole brood finna wash this planet.

4 Maidens of mud, when the water done makin’ slop of the earth,

we’ll root in raw dung. Kick wherever our pink hooves please.

Outnumber the men who penned us here.

²Feed till our bellies bulge into boulders—be too large

for any hook to hold us.