Cathy Park Hong

Year of the Pig

8.1

Brother, we were thralled by massif dead pigs floating
downriver          we hauled butchered feasted
then squalled for it was rotted meat.
Feeblest of bipeds we were but monks prayed for us,
cured us of our rankled bodies.
Now the new observatory’s been ransacked for its myths,
the telescope          shattered to a million bifocals
the furrier uses em now to sew tiny rabbit mitts
w’hayseed beads for forcep babes
of the landlord foe. . . .

-- read the rest of this poem and more poems by Cathy Park Hong and others at Octopus Magazine #12