This city is a pig farm

but you are young, so you don’t mind;

 

to you, it’s merely dirty work,

and dirty work makes for

 

an interesting story, and being gay,

in your mind, is being a body made

 

of interesting stories.

You don’t know any better, yet,

 

but this city is a pig farm,

filled with the hot, panicked huffs

 

of mouths sifting through mud,

tracing your limbs in dark rooms

 

and bathroom stalls. This city

is a pig farm: you’re the tongue

 

and the slop, the butcher and

the block and the fat and

 

the skin and the trough and

the pale bleed of dusk over field. You can’t

 

look back: this city, this pig farm, spreading its

legs, welcoming boys who are

 

what you once were: ravenous.

Now, this city, it sinks its sticking knives

 

deep into the pits of you, takes flesh

by the pound, bleeds you dry. It offers a fair market-price

 

for your indiscretions. This city is built for pigs:

it plays the roles of farm and farmer. You are lost

 

in its filth, this city that bloats with the smell

of old meat and new meat alike. This city

 

is every interesting story boiled down

to broth. This city sizzles like grease

 

in a skillet, like a side of ham twisting

amidst the heat. You say I’m sorry

 

for wanting so deeply as if this city,

this pig farm, can hear a word

 

you say, your shallow

squeal one of millions just like it.

 

There is no back, or before, there is

only digging deeper into the blood-thick mud.

 

This city is a pig farm; the residents

eat everything, even the bones.