"The Smokehouse" by Yusef Komunyakaa

The Smokehouse

In the hickory scent

Among slabs of pork

Glistening with salt,

I played Indian

In a headdress of redbird feathers

& brass buttons

Off my mother’s winter coat.

Smoke wove

A thread of fire through meat, into December

& January. The dead weight

Of the place hung around me,

Strung up with sweetgrass.

The hog had been sectioned,

A map scored into skin;

Opened like love,

From snout to tail,

The goodness

No longer true to each bone.

I was a wizard

In that hazy world,

& knew I could cut

Slivers of meat till my heart

Grew more human & flawed.

Source of the text – Yusef Komunyakaa, Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems.  Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2001, pages 274-275.

TJB: Slow-cooked, pulled off the bone, with stress on strong “o” and “k” sounds—the sound of smoke—the poem remembers childhood play & smoked meat.