The Literary Archive

Javelina

I. 

She lies still as the stars,
her moon-yellow skin and black hair.
I sit against the cave wall and listen.
She holds my foot in the palms of her hands.

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II.

She wears a pig mask. 
We were up in some high country
trying romance for the first time. 
She told me to meet her on the roof of the bar.
I waited ten minutes before I heard footsteps. 
She was behind me when I turned. 

On top of her shoulders sat a peccary’s head: skunk pig.

 

When I tell her I’m glad she came 
she removes the mask and demands,
“Do you find me beautiful now?”
I inch in to close the widening gap. 
She keeps me at arm’s length and says, 
“This was my father’s. I used to be fat.”
“Okay, but you’re beautiful. You have to know that.”
“But I will be again. This is what you’ll get.”
“Let me get to know you then.”
She puts the animal’s head back on and begins to root around in the dust.

I descend the fire escape after the awkwardness sets in.    

 

She calls me a week later. 
“You left me,” she complains. 
“You left me for that stupid mask.”
“I would’ve taken it off. I tried to find you.”
“Really? Where’d you go?”
“I hiked around a bit, got hit on in coffee shops.”
“Were you wearing the pig?”
“It’s not a pig. It’s a peccary.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I knew you couldn’t do this.”
To prove her point she doesn’t return my calls. 

 

I pick up her call after two weeks.
At the bookstore coffee shop
she pulls a picture from her pocket. 
It’s her and she is large by any measure. 
She’s on the set of a TV show three years ago.
“Where was this taken?”
“On MTV’s My 628.9625 Life. It never aired. 
They said I was too fat for the show.”
“But that’s not who I’m looking at.”
“You’re shallow.”
She puts on the javelina. 
People are staring. 
She reaches for my hand. 
I take it. 

​

This connection lasts for 56 hours. 
Now she won’t return my texts
or pick up the phone. 

I drive to her apartment but she’s not there.
I find her in a basement bar surrounded by men.
All of them: 6+ feet, gym-tricepped, and steel-jawed.
She goes home with seven of them. 
One per night.  

I hide out on the barstool for a week and count.
There’s no boar’s head in sight. 
I need a toothbrush. 
I need a shave. 
The bartender gives me her number and says, 
“If you look really close, her hair is thinning.”
As I head to the door the bartender calls out, 
“Have you seen her knuckles?”

III. 

I read Charlotte’s Web and make connections that aren’t there.
I know I can save her.
I’m the gray spider. 
I will make her win the prize and she will stay.

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She is wearing a javelina’s head
and standing on my porch. 
I stay seated on my couch and give it a few.
It’s been three weeks.

​

“I can see you haven’t changed.”
“Can I come in?”
“Take off the mask.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s stuck?”
“Yeah.”

 

This is the part where I should turn her out.
The song lyrics to an Offspring song run through my head.
I am that sucker. 
No. I’m not a doormat. 
“You can’t come in, I’m sorry.”
She is astonished. 
I start to close the door.
The javelina stares back at me with cold and tiny eyes, 
shoulders slumped, and dumb.
I lock the door, swallow hard and die. 
I am always alone.
I am still alone. 
I am alone.
Alone.

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I steal candy with abandon:
Almond Joy (14), King Size Snickers (9), Good & Plenty (18) at Texaco
Mike and Ike (10), Mars Bars (17), Bazooka Joe (48) at 7-Eleven
Mounds (15), M&M’S Peanut (25), M&M’S Plain (16), TWIZZLERS (34) at Circle K
Cherry Nibs (29), Baby Ruth (12), and Raisinets (19) at Chevron.

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I close my eyes and drink to black out.
Black beer: 
Schwarzbier, Stout, Brown Oatmeal, Smoke & Dagger, Dunkel, Deschutes Black Butte 
Midnight tequila:
Adictivo Extra Añejo  
Whiskey, scotch, brandy, cognac in the dark.
I black out.
In the gray morning I drink black coffee. 
I grind Colombian beans and start snorting.
My sinuses are on fire. Tears drown my eyes. 
And then black as a hole, as far as the star, black tar. 
I tap the vein.
Two days later I am picked up at a petting zoo and admitted. 

​

In rehab, I watch clever movies with pigs that talk.
I’m inspired by their resourcefulness. 
This convinces me to put on some pants, 
sober up and stop feeling sorry for myself.

 

I am back in the world.
Rehab said I need community.
I join record clubs, book clubs, hair combing clubs, kissing clubs.
I meet Meredith.
She is “thirty-eight and always divorced.”
The group says, “Thank you Meredith.”
She is the most divorced woman I’ve kissed on my couch. 

​

Later Meredith divorces the kissing club, 
our Tuesday night make-outs and “society at large.”
“I’m divorcing you.”
“We were never married.”
“I just think it’s time to move on.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Raise goats.”

​

I’m back in the aisles of Kmart. 
Rehab articulated that I don’t deal well with rejection. 
The loudspeaker blares my intentions, 
“Shoplifter, aisle six.”
“Shoplifter, aisle six.”
I make a mad dash out the doors, 
my pockets stuffed with detergent, battery cables, ten-dollar DVDs, Little Trees fresheners.  

​

In the afternoon, she is at my door. 
I don’t recognize her at first.
It’s been months.  
She’s not wearing the javelina. 
She has a pet.

​

I open the window. “What do you want?”
“Can we talk?”
“Why do you have a pig on a leash?”
“It’s a piglet.”
“He’s hideous.”
“It’s a she. Can she come in?”
“I never said you could.”
“Can I?”
I look inside for an answer but there is none.
I look outside for a sign, but she’s the only thing there—she and her pig. 
But it’s on a leash. She can let it go.
I say, “Leave the pig.”

​

She says she’s changed and tells me things about her evolution. 
But none of it matters if the javelina rides her shoulders. 
“Do you still have the pig?”
“You were the nicest guy.” 
“What happened to the pig?”
“I’ve learned so much about myself.”
“What about the other men?”
“I’ve been just awful.”
“You never even showed them the pig.”
“I know I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“You probably never even mentioned it to them.”
“I’ve grown a lot.”
“Am I just not man enough?”
“I want you to give us another chance.”

IV.  

I tell her I’ll watch the piglet while she packs up.
When she leaves I butcher the squealing javelina. 
“Sorry about the pig.”
“It was a javelina.”
We eat with abandon. 
We drive towards the wilderness to celebrate our reunion. 
At a rest stop she asks me if we’ve attained trust.
“We’re getting close.”
She winks. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She takes my hand and leads me to the bathroom.
I hold her hair while she sticks her finger down her throat.
She looks up at me and smiles at me. “Your turn.”
I take her to 7-Eleven.  

​

Three women are fighting over the last pack of bacon.
The manager is diverted.
We load our car with stolen goods.
She says, “You have to stop stealing” and promises to keep her finger out of her throat.

​

We arrive in the woods under starlight.
The stars hang like glittered sand and bright the silent trail.
The air is almost humid.
We hike deeper in the strange wood.
I carry our gear and hold the light. 
She waves sticks in the sky and destroys cobwebs that stand in our way. 

Gray spiders must reimagine what it means to live.

We discover a cave with a large mouth.
Inside there is room enough to stand tall. 
After a time we enter a cozy room.
There is a sign on the wall:

​

Care for this home. You’re not the only ones.
Peace!  

 

My headlamp illuminates our surroundings.
This has been many people’s home.
There is a large cot, 
an air mattress, 
a pallet holding raw potatoes, and a few spoiled onions.
Backpacking and climbing magazines are crudely stacked near rudimentary shelving.
The shelving holds an assortment of strange books:
Extinction of the Entelodonts 
Even Two-Toed Ungulates Can Change 
Acceptance. An Omnivore’s Vibrant Approach to Food, Love, and Life
Been Caught Stealing? Now What?
Addiction is the Mouth That Never Feels 
Mountains, Women, and Other Immovable Objects  

​

We bed down for the night.
She holds her toothbrush and says, “We could stay here.” 
“I just need a gun.”
“We have food.”
“We’ll need more.”
“I don’t eat much.”

​

At night the rain pours.
We are broken bowels under a leaking cavern.
We huddle together and think of floods and wet clothes.
But what rain comes in just trickles down the wall into pots already placed.

Tomorrow I will look for food.

A week later the sky clears and the air is warm. 
We sit outside the mouth of the cave and she beds down for the night.
I build a fire. It keeps the wild boars away. 

I watch her under the moonlight.

 

She lies still as the stars,
her moon-yellow skin and black hair.
I sit against the cave wall and listen. 
She holds my foot in the palms of her hands. 
 
 

Author's Note

An earlier version of Javelina received an honorable mention for the Olive Woolley Burt Award. The poem later became the foundation for an unfinished short story of the same name, and elements of that fiction eventually found their way into my novel-in-progress, Confessions of an NPC.

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This is a revised version of the original poem.