DeSoto and the Pigs
Sandra Kolankiewicz
Yes! We went up there. Y que?! Babies
sucked openly, mothers showing
themselves, the men so foolish they tossed
back crayfish bearing eggs. How could they
benefit from letting us see their women? We
drove the swine through their cornstalks, the
banks filthy where they rooted. Better to
cover them up, best to leave a wife at home,
silk and pearls sewed into her lace, than to
see two years later: the rib cages, tall grasses
between them like plumes, ulnas and femurs
scattered, skulls open and turned toward the
light, the few pigs that had escaped us gone
feral, so quick our dogs couldn’t catch them.
Most recently Sandra Kolankiewicz's work has appeared in or been accepted by Gargoyle, Monkeybicyle, Per Contra, The Cortland Review, Chaffey Review, SNReview, Rhino, New Plains Review, Common Ground Review, Noctua, Psychic Meatloaf, Bellingham Review, Atticus, and Solo Novo. Her chapbook of poems, Turning Inside Out, won the Black River Prize and is available from Black Lawrence Press. Blue Eyes Don't Cry won the Hackney Award for the Novel. She lives in Marietta, Ohio, and teaches Developmental English at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.
