Jim Ross
Pigs
after Les Murray
Us fat in squalor fitted into crates,
besmirched a-grunting where we snout our feed.
With bedsores crippled. Drip-slats in the grating
more scat slopped under. Úp kept gumming eats.
Ears notched, denatured; redacted tail-bits docked
in squealing dark around. Demented sleep
gone sideways, wayward. Back, we balked, debacle’d.
Flopped flat in hot dry grime while riding heaped
with fly-stung scabs till prodded off a ramp,
us squiggling trampled like our feedstock maggots.
When glutted got till trotters scrapple-ample,
past firehose and closed-in walls to pallet.
Through chutes ran shocks hamfisted shoved enroute,
our brothers’ heads flapped open, downside out.
Will Cordeiro has work published in AGNI, Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, The Threepenny Review, and THRUSH. Will won the 2019 Able Muse Book Award for Trap Street and is co-author of Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, forthcoming from Bloomsbury. Will also co-edits Eggtooth Editions.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after rewarding research career. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in seven years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, hybrid, and plays in over 175 journals on five continents. Photo publications include Barren, Burningword, Camas, DASH, Kestrel, Litro, Feral, Stonecoast, Sweet, and Typehouse. Jim and his wife split time between city and mountains.