The Pig Roast
One of the guests, a stout, big-haired woman in a tight-fitting dress, asked the head of catering for the pig’s nose, which he gladly severed with a quick chop of his cleaver. The pig, slow-cooked to the color of a copper penny, stared out dumbly through walnut eyes, mouth open, as if it wanted to protest this indignity. The woman tasked a housemaid with finding a safety pin which was produced in good time. She then pinned the nose to the strap of her dress and proceeded to spend the next half hour approaching the other guests asking each whether something smelled funny to them, too. The catering crew lit the Sterno canisters and filled the chafing dishes with pulled pork, baked beans and corn pudding. The hostess stood on the steps of the back patio and clapped her hands. When that failed to get everyone’s attention, her husband handed her a bell which she rang vigorously. “Tonight we’re slumming it,” she cheerily exclaimed. “It’s serve yourself. Buffet style.” The guests, the well-to-do and aspiring social climbers, looked at one another and then, after some tedious back and forth to determine who should go first, organized themselves into something resembling an orderly line.
~
Paradise
A man and a woman leave a restaurant together each in possession of their thoughts, his the hope they’ll get home in time to catch the end of the basketball game, money riding on it, hers on passing a festive store window, that Easter is so early this year, the first week of April, and not yet a single tulip or jonquil, early risers. Of course, following the flowers, bees. Then flies, mosquitos, and cicada, if this is a year a brood rises from their temporary graves to shed their worn out skin. All this thinking of bugs makes her unsettled for reasons she can’t explain. Perhaps she was traumatized in childhood by a spider in her bedroom hanging from its elastic thread inches above her pillow. Or maybe she equates bugs with death, having once found a kitten covered by a pale fist of writhing maggots in the field behind their house. Nevertheless, two people, a couple, walking side by side each with their own concerns, neither noticing the hint of rain in the air nor the way the sidewalk was graded to go around an established tree. She takes his hand and asks if he loves her. Of course, he says, squeezing hers. But, do you mind, can we walk faster?
~
Old Soul
Pine needle and pungent wet earth, a dozen or more boys hiking in a line watching the ground for roots and loose rock, the back of the one in front’s pack, round official scouting canteen swaying like the pendulum of an old grandfather clock. The path the boys are on is, of course, time — they can be forgiven their complaints of boredom, young and just beginning to discover the steady, reassuring cadence of walking. There’s one among them, always at least one, different from the rest, pulling ahead, led by bird call and scat sign, spotter of cairns, as predictable as moss on the north and aware where leather rubs against skin, blisters by day’s end.
~
Bill Brymer is a writer and photographer from Louisville, Kentucky. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Louisville Review, Porchlight, Salvation South, Prairie Schooner, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, Tar River Poetry, Southwest Review, Poetry South, Yearling, and other publications. His book Neighborhood Watch is scheduled for publication by Accents Publishing in early 2027.