THE WHOLE HOG
by and published in Edition Four of Pomegranate
was spit-roasted for writing sestinas.
A skewer through his intestines,
he parodied the insistence
of fire in an improvised sestina.
‘Can somebody shut up the hog?’ roared the Mayor.
His quickwitted personal assistant, Christina,
jammed an apple into the hog’s mouth.
Now the voice came burbling out of its backside,
improvising a lovesong to Christina
in flawless persona, as the Mayor.
Hoots rose from the crowd of hired yokels.
Everyone had some with applesauce.
Some smirking chefs presented me with the anus:
this, they assured me, was the ‘best part’
and obligatory for visitors.
I scooped on extra applesauce.
It whispered to me ‘Take care
I don’t get lodged in your voicebox.
Recommend me to six of your friends.
I might get a poem from this, although I doubt it.’
John Clegg
John Clegg is a 21-year-old MA student who lives in Cambridge Manchester Durham. Likes horses, cold soup on a hot day, German beer and pastries, poetry and poets. Judges everything else on a case-by-case basis. Other poems in Other Poetry, Seam, Rialto.