Pork Salt

by Kay Cosgrove

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They still slice them open, that hasn’t changed, but now

instead of grass: cages             instead of sex, only the scent of sex
to get the lady pigs ready
for the plastic insert and     motherhood.

I learned this from Ira Glass via Netflix via John’s subscription

last night about midnight and now                        well, it’s there, isn’t it? I can’t remove

the facts from my brain with some tiny tweezers the housedoctor for the dollhouse has

in his doll-bag. His midnight

calls are becoming more and more frequent as the lady of the house readies
herself

to give birth to a new, precious piggy.

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Kay Cosgrove work has appeared in journals such as Zone 3, Caper Literary Journal, Scrambler, Autumn Sky Poetry and Verse Wisconsin. She is a first-year doctoral student in the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program.

Kay Cosgrove

Kay Cosgrove is the author of Anybody Home? (Blue Edge Books 2023). She received a BA from Fairfield University, an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and a PhD in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. She is the recipient of awards from The Academy of American Poets, Inprint Houston, and The Westchester Review. Her poetry has appeared in The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and EPOCH Magazine, among other journals. She lives in Philadelphia. Read more at kaycosgrove.com.