Sarah Beddow

The Pig of the Secret

1.

Suffice the saying

      these things are
not Dedre's
   to tell

[   the   cloven womb
         gangly, goose-necked and bone-hard & white]

[ the strobe quickening in the gut ]

[ the suckling knit from combed wool & sinew ]

No, not her stories,
   still they led her to the bar by her neitherways,
ouvert and all.

2.

Dedre Speaks

I'll wear the gold comb in my hair, O.

My hair is    is    is
red.
Rubine red, stop-sign red.

   My hair is red-red, O.

He said your hair is
slut red
but he was sweet about it
   so I licked the beer from his beard, O.
   In the ladies', the ladies', O.

      O, his grizzly muzzle
      O, his cinnamon paws
      O his fish breath & O his belly roar
      O his roric snout O his pink tongue O the pink tongue secret.
      O!

I took the comb,
      a token of my appreciation, he said, O!

3.

The man will not tell Dedre what secret he's stowed between her ears
She isn't to know
   Maybe if she'd asked, when he'd put it there
                  that night in the ladies'

So she asks and asks
   a chick opening its mouth to the sky
         waiting for a rain of worms

When she asks what he has stowed between her ears
he tells her
   it's a pig
      imagine a pig: bristled and moist on the snout
            pink

He tells her
   not to worry
and
   the pig probably will be fine

            in the end

So long as wears her hair wrapped around her ears
and the comb in her hair

and keeps her mouth shut

He sends her to a building with snakes on the sign
His friends will keep the secret safe for her

His snake-friends gave her medicine and told her

it must be administered buccally

What?
So she looked it up
she puts the medicine
   between her cheek and gums:

should
      it
   fizzzzzzz like that ?

   Her teeth hum

Hmmmmmm she pictures the pig

      —she's so obedient—

            snouting its way through the fizzles

She opens her mouth for the worms

         then remembers to keep it shut

4.

The morning smelled like metal    It was
a fork tine on a filling in a molar

Her hair kept her brains
         between her ears
                  in the cold
The comb pressed its teeth against her scalp

            *

When she first got the pig
She thought it would be her mouth
            tongued it away
but the medicine she cheeked
   made her mouth a featherbed
And she knew it would keep the pig safe

The secret was hers now
   Fully a pig in her mind
      but was it safe there?

            *
Dedre feared for the secret
She in her mind watched it trotter
            oinker
   its way out of whichever
orifice felt most vulnerable   that minute

Last night she put away the ouvert for good
Crossed combs in her hair to bind it over her ears
Considered plugging her nose
   a clothes pin?

Thank goodness her eyeballs filled their sockets so roundly

            *

The metal air mixed with exhaust and Dedre got on the bus
She sat directly between the driver
a woman with breasts of ironwood

and a halitosied man who sloshed over the three seats of the back bench

They never listen to
he said

She hadn't heard the rest
Pins and needles through her chest, her face

He knows and she knows
         worry is worry for a reason

She plugged her index finger against the nostril not currently in service
The bus reeled

5.

Dedre Speaks

They like me, O.
Or what they fill me with, O.
They fill me with beer, O.
With pills
O, I fill me—O—with Schnapps.

Not poison pills, O no!
But pills that keep what's in
         in
            in
               in, O.

The pills can't keep what's out
         out
            out
   out, O.

But, the snake men say, the snake men say: O,
the pills don't always
keep what's in
   in
      in
            in, O.

We can help you get another secret
      Another pig, the other snake-man says, O.
Inside, if you like

   I'd like a small Schnapps on the rocks.
      Cinnamon, cinnamon, O.

O, where did the man with the cinnamon paws
                  go?

Sometimes the snake men call me O, Cinnamon

my hair
my hair, you see, O.

6.

Report on the Secret

A. Skull–Contents of

is fresh
   submitted in 7 cassettes
   received fresh
   fresh pinkish greyish tissue

is coded
a book cipher of a more recent edition
trisomy and monosomy of [    ]
   data lost digested recombined

is a possible partial pig
is growing smaller, blacker eyes filled with rheum
cloven   dirty

is a partial, a hypoplastic mole
growing claws and gone blind in the
chills
      in the aftermath
   nose searching worms for the teeth to bite
eating the worms it finds with its nose

is vestigial

is female

is missed

7.

Dedre hid the golden comb
   and the report
   beneath her pillow

They didn't tell her the report would be—
well, they didn't tell her anything

   The snake men in their penny loafers
cut the pig from her
while she was sleeping
freed her hair from her ears
   drew the pig, the secret through the ear drum with alligator forceps
and gave her the report

She already knew the pig would grow to be a girl

She dreamed she gave the girl the golden comb
to put beneath her pillow

and together they waited for the man with cinnamon paws to come

With her mother one spring they sat on the bed
together
her father dead for nearly a day
a silver comb beneath his pillow

   —that was how the folk got him—

the keening of her mother
the screaming barn owls
   how their chicks sounded like pigs waiting for the slop

How soon her mother threw the comb in the river
though Dedre wanted it for herself

Now her ear was a pillowy silence
She wanted to read the report again
or spread the flames of her hair across her barrel-chested bear man
or hold the comb to the throat of

it didn't matter

She waited for the keening
   the singing to start

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