Dion O’Reilly
Why Did I Call My Pig?
I watched my mother call her,
I watched my sister too.
My father chased her.
They tried to round her up,
but my piebald oinker was quick,
her squeals greasing the air.
My huge baby, companion
on aimless teenage days
when I balanced on the fencepost,
listening to her belly-deep rumble,
scratched with a stick her itchy,
thick-skinned back.
The butcher with a rifle,
stood impatient by his Chevy truck
its hook and chain ready
to haul the limp sow up,
to scrape the skin and slice the stomach
in a thin red line, the bowels spilling
glazy as moonstones.
Forgive me. To show off my small power,
I called her—the one she loved—
and she came running.
Poems by Dion O’Reilly have appeared or will appear in New Ohio Review, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Bellingham Review, Atlanta Review, Catamaran, and other journals and anthologies. O’Reilly has spent much of her life on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains. She has worked as a waitress, barista, baker, theater manager, graphic designer, and public school teacher.
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