Spring 2010, Volume 8

Poetry by Charles Springer

Larder

I have pictures in my head
of the pigpens in Dad's barn.
I walked in them to shovel shit,
lay clean straw and dump chop
into the feeders.
I carried buckets of water. 
The pigs bumped their hams
against my calves. Their sloppy
noses snuffled my shoes.  I petted them—
their ears and between their ears,
their bristly backs.  I heard
their squeals and grunts as they nudged 
each other and ate.  But I'm missing
something—their dainty feet,
their ever-questioning tails,
how they snuggled together
in a moonlit corner like potatoes
in the cellar, blonde as can be
and all squinty-eyed.

 

BIO: Charles Springer has degrees in anthropology and is an award-winning painter, having lived much of his life in Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. He currently eats, sleeps, bicycles and writes from the family homestead in the mountains of north central Pennsylvania where he earns a living in advertising and is constantly trying to keep his barn from falling down. Over the years Charles has enjoyed publishing in Apalachee Review, Boxcar Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Faultline, Heliotrope, and Oxford Magazine among others. New poems appear or will appear in The Coe Review, Sawbuck and The Avatar Review.