Pigs

There must be something
in the oral tradition
about the first animal
the sun makes visible
on any given day.

There is.

There must be something
of the policeman
in the gormless features of the ruminants
wherever they remain upon the earth.

There is.

Tell me
will you roll in this shit forever?
will you eat the parasites from their raw sheaths?
will you soften the hide
in the grease of the hydraulics of the skull?
will you print your own name in the lye?

—it may become necessary
as you already know
to stand in a cold room
for eight to twelve hours
as the requested payments
break and then combine in many branches
like a map of altitudes in layered colors

I believe we will remember best
the days of that mean pig in shit
when the audits were simpler
and the cliffs were ours in 1999

Items (I-III)

With this division

a) the stocks become mine
b) the drafts become yours
c) the bed-desk
wanders between two stacks of the tilting heavens.

II.

There was negligence in the lighting of the stones some evenings.
My bedroom doors were closed because the lacquer he brushed on.

He fell into the gully more than once.
He punted a five-dollar fan.
He rose from bed each day despite his mother.
He built a doghouse, though we had no dog.

There was negligence in the lighting of the air most mornings.
My bedroom doors were closed because the lacquer he brushed on.

III.

to your own children
you have become a willing guardian
and are therefore obligated to impart
an understanding of the world

as in,
perfect the nimbus-fire of a finger dipped in gin
sleep on stones or trampolines
light fire with a tumbleweed and tar

also—chisel keys

Jesse Littlejohn lives in New Jersey. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, DIAGRAM, Mid-American Review and elsewhere.