Eddie Leaves His Wife

Jean Tucker

 

Weekends he goes down

to the pig farm, pulls on

tall rubber boots where he left them

inside the barn door.

 

He can’t wait

to get out there with his pigs,

pockets full of Oreos.

(He knows from the county fair

what makes pigs run.)

 

Rain or shine he loves

the grunts and snorts, the suck

of old boots in the mud,

the wallow of sow flesh.

 

When the wind veers hard

from the north, he sees her

glowering in the clouds,

feels her cold fire eyes.

 

He turns up his collar, turns

to the pigs.  The young ones, sleek

as rockets, come alongside him,

fill his lungs with a smell

 

that keeps him pressed against the fence.

He dips into his pocket.  The pigs

crowd and snuffle, nudge his boots.

 

He could stand forever like this,

the tough wire fence swaying

to the weight of the big mother pig

who holds the ground steady

as far as he can see.

    


Jean Tucker teaches English as a Second Language at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville and has been a writer-in-residence at Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska.  Jean’s work has appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Cumberland Poetry Review, Iowa Woman, and other journals.

 

 

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