A Sanctioned Betrayal


Texas allows hunters to kill wild hogs year-round without limits, or capture them alive to take to slaughterhouses to be processed and sold to restaurants as exotic meat. Thousands more are shot from helicopters.

—Smithsonian Magazine, 2011

On ranches they tell you to watch out

for the hogs—

Damn smart. Smarter’n a dog.

Known to scope out traps, 

send a scout alone

to test an area before traveling

into new terrain. 


Ranchers don’t like hogs. 

Hogs spread weeds and disease.

They will charge a grown man 

with five-inch tusks, stick

a new bone in his thigh.


Once on a fishing trip with my father, 

I saw two hogs. The older one

quietly grunted as she rooted 

through the cattails.

I remember thinking, My god 

that’s an old sow. Half an ear 

and red as Texas clay. She was born 

straight from the mud.


Judas Pig—such a heavy name 

that calls into question 

the nature of allusion

and whether any old thing

can lift its heel,


outfitted as it was with a tracking collar, 

entrusted to act 

as animals do.


Above, helicopter wings: 

chop-chop chop-chop

A Chevy rusts.

Bluebonnets will grow 

come spring. She’s home now, 

real prodigal pig or something.


The field was called Akeldama.