Free The Hungry Ear by Kevin Young Page A

gather
all night to labor over the unadorned
beds they have dug into the ground and filled
with the hardwood coals that glow like remote stars.
Their faces molten and ignited in the damp,
    they know to turn the meat infrequently,
they know to keep the flame slow and the fire
cool. From a vat of spirits subacid and brackish,
they know to baste only occasionally. So that
by sunrise vapor will continue to collect, as usual,
    forming, as it should, three types of clouds,
that the rainfall from the clouds, it is certain,
will not exceed the capacity of the river,
that the river will still flow, as always,
sweet brother, on course.

The Gospel of Barbecue
    HONORÉE JEFFERS
    for Alvester James
    Long after it was
necessary, Uncle
Vess ate the leavings
off the hog, doused
them with vinegar sauce.
He ate chewy abominations.
Then came high pressure.
Then came the little pills.
Then came the doctor
who stole Vess’s second
sight, the predication
of pig’s blood every
fourth Sunday.
Then came the stillness
of barn earth, no more
trembling at his step.
Then came the end
of the rib, but before
his eyes clouded,
Uncle Vess wrote
down the gospel
of barbecue.
    Chapter one
:
Somebody got to die
with something at some
time or another.
    Chapter two
:
Don’t ever trust
white folk to cook
your meat until
it’s done to the bone.
    Chapter three
:
December is the best
time for hog killing.
The meat won’t
spoil as quick.
Screams and blood
freeze over before
they hit the air.
    Chapter four, Verse one
:
Great Grandma Mandy
used to say food
you was whipped
for tasted the best.
    Chapter four, Verse two
:
Old Master knew to lock
the ham bacon chops
away quick or the slaves
would rob him blind.
He knew a padlock
to the smokehouse
was best to prevent
stealing, but even the
sorriest of slaves would
risk a beating for a full
belly. So Christmas time
he give his nasty
leftovers to the well
behaved. The head ears
snout tail fatback
chitlins feet ribs balls.
He thought gratitude
made a good seasoning.
    Chapter five
:
Unclean means dirty
means filthy means
underwear worn too
long in summertime heat.
Perfectly good food
can’t be no sin.
Maybe the little
bit of meat on ribs
makes for lean eating.
Maybe the pink flesh
is tasteless until you add
onions garlic black
pepper tomatoes
soured apple cider
but survival ain’t never been
no crime against nature
or Maker. See, stay alive
in the meantime, laugh
a little harder. Go on
and gnaw that bone clean.

Sooey Generous
    WILLIAM MATTHEWS
    Saint Anthony, patron of sausage makers,
guide my pen and unkink my tongue. Of swine
I sing, and of those who tend and slaughter them,
of slops and wallows and fodder, of piglets
doddering on their stilty legs, and sows
splayed to offer burgeoned teats to sucklers,
and the four to five tons of manure
a pig (that ambling buffet) reinvests
in the soil each year; of truffle dowsers
and crunchers of chestnuts and acorns I sing.
    In medieval Naples, each household
kept a pig on a twenty-four-foot tether,
rope enough that the hooved Hoover could
scour the domain, whereas in Rome
pigs foraged the streets haunted today by
rat-thin cats, tendons with fur. In Paris
in those years the
langueyers
, the “tonguers,”
or meat inspectors, lifted a pig’s tongue
to look for white ulcers, since the comely
pig in spoiled condition could poison
    a family. Indeed the Buddha died
from eating spoiled pork, vegetarians
I know like to insist, raising the stakes
from wrong to fatal, gleefully. Perhaps
you’ve read the bumper sticker too:
A Heart
Attack Is God’s Revenge for Eating His
Little Friends
. Two major religions
prohibit eating pork. Both creeds were forged
in deserts, and the site-specific pig,
who detests dry mud, has never mixed well
    with nomads or vice versa. Since a pig
eats everything, just as the cuisines that
sanctify the pig discard no fragment
of it, it makes sense to eat it whole hog
or shun it altogether, since to eat
or not to eat is sacral,