This next poem is called, "Pig."
"I pulled into Galdini sausage at noon.
The workers walked out of production
and swatted away the flies desperate for pork.
Pork gripped the men and was everywhere
in the form of blood, in the form of fat,
and in pink meat stuck to the worker's shoes.
Outside, 80-pound boxes of pork melted under the sun,
and as the sun worked, the blood and fat grew soft,
and the boxes lined with wax became
like thin paper soaked in oil.
Mack trucks came in with unprocessed pork
and took out chorizo, linguica, hot links,
and sausage, German, sweet, breakfast, hot, and mild.
One man stood straight up into the sky, closed his eyes,
and with his thumb and forefinger,
worked out bits of meat from his eyelashes glistening
like black grease under the sun.
The air conditioner in Mr. Galdini's office
made the papers from his desk float onto the floor.
He gave me a hard hat, a smock, an apron, a hairnet.
You're in there, he said.
And he lifted the blinds of a window that partitioned
his office from production.
He stood, gut pushed out, and his whole body
swayed with ease as the workers walked out,
hump back under the unyielding memories of pig."
Does anybody here like sausage--
breakfast sausage, chorizo, gravy with sausage in it,
longaniza, to this day, people always ask me,
do you still eat sausage?
And I say, yes, I love sausage to this very day.
I know what's in it, in case you're wondering.