If you feed me garbage, / I will sing a song of garbage.

‘Pig Song’ by Margaret Atwood

                             to be a pig                is to know the word      crush       
              Miss Piggy’s eternally unrequited crush on                        
 emotionally unavailable Kermit    
neither cast ye your pearls before swine 
             lest they trample them under their feet (Matthew 7:6)
                                     common cause of neonatal piggy death—  
                                                         sows rolling over in their sleep,                     
  long histories of breeding for feeding           means 
             that like           cliffside mansions in the Anthropocene      
                        their organs are prone to 
                                                               collapse.                                    
                                         speaking of organs,         
                       how fast do you think     
                                       those little ham hock hearts were           beating                  
               when those two hogs mugged infamous tax-evading     
hip-shaking Shakira      in a public park?                  
                                                  speaking of hearts, 
               i cut open a pig heart      in year five biology
                    its pinkness       its pipes        its precious parts
                     the closest to ours              out of every living thing in the world.
                                                                                                 speaking of the world,
                                           i am thinking abt how pigs see it,                    
      dichromatic vision pouring out                 from their eyes        
solidifying objects            as pure colour
                      for example—      they may see the 
                                             blue of the sky          as wide expanse 
                                                          but not any clouds      or     rainbows 
                                            it may hold.
               well-known industry fact—       stress before
 slaughter can make pig flesh
                                          D             F              D
                                                        (Dark!        Firm!       Dry!)
                                                                         an AI pig farm in China 
                                                      plays ambient mix on loop 
                                                       to captive porcine audience,
                                             to oink-oink-optimise 
                            how their bodies feel 
                                           against our teeth.     
                                        in opposition to its name, tenderising
                                     is a brutal act           who else has ever seen 
             a tenderiser & thought       medieval torture device?
                                           we are always
                                                            oink-oink-optimising
                                                                    our own tender meat—
             i am the same age as         the word biohacking,
have submitted                myself to
                         the indignities of Pilates
                                sheet masks made from boiled bones
                                            &                 first dates with men
                                                    who swore by          intermittent fasting. 
                           lifestyle guru gives himself 
        resveratrol-induced shits         in the pursuit of endurance,
something spiritual abt
                 shitting yourself towards transcendence,
                                                        the                  slop-slop-sublime.
                                           i am watching a video of Lotus,
                                                                       piggy sweetie rescued 
                                                  from a life as dog bait,
                she carefully gathers flowers 
to decorate her home 
                     &   in this way    the poem
                                                can be a pig sty.
              at a farm animal sanctuary, 
       i am         learning abt 
                  how we have made pigs 
                             pink out of a preference for
                                                     light-skinned meat &
                                                              how being under the sky & the sun
                        burns their skin to         a bacon crisp.      
their bodies are           mighty meaty odes to        multitasking,
                                                     a dead pig is
                                                            beating ham
                                                                             sticky heart    
                                                                                        brined glue      
                                                                               but              an alive pig 
                                                                                  roots in the soil   
                                                                           turning it over
                                                                      with its snout
                                                                                   softening the ground
                                                                                                       is this          a hymn

                                                                                         
                        

Image: Mark Robinson