The Barr by Cole W. Williams

      Danielle Henry CC




The Barr

The ex-marine sent me two photos from night one. 
One of the boar on the ground of sand and seashells. 
One of the boar strung-up next to him—wider than he was
just as tall. Lifeless. The Man said #250, maybe #300,
this got way out of control the Man said. 

                              The night he died she was gone on a trip to Cali,
                              working at an oil refinery—a strange opportunity
                              for quick money. I was alone in bed at night in the dark
                              as the smoke alarm went through a series of malfunctions.
                              The strobe lights circled the room, the siren leapt to life;
                              the sound and light made arrays of never-ending. 
                              Covering my ears, I looked at it and said Hey. 

The ex-marine called it a Barr: a hog captured, castrated and clipped in the ear. 
This hog was a roaming, raging testosterone. Transformation, eat be eaten.
Now it would be a roaming raging storage of calories. The eat machine.
Our coconuts. Our mangoes. Our livelihood. We would have nothing to sell. 

                              The year before I left her, I said, in a year I am gunna to leave you
                              unless you x, y, z: 
                              x = invite the kid’s dad in
                              y = less drinking/benders
                              z = something about mental wellness
                              I had my own work to do. Every New Year’s I was circling the drain 
                              of a sticky tar grief: the anniversary of his, my high school boyfriend’s suicide.

A Barr is a live creature created with intention. An intelligent design.
Someone had set the chaos eater free. In its orbit were boarlets;
new generations of eaters…12…13…independents, following the Barr
to our freshwater food forest. The Barr had been left for years to fend
for itself, to steal, to break, to root-up the foundations of the farm meticulously 
placed over generations to be in synchronicity with the sun and production. 
The sun-leaf-fruit cycle was interrupted by a force which would take everything
and had, year-after-year. 

                              She used to say, I don’t want to hear his name. 
                              Don’t say it out loud. Perform it: Happiness. 
                              Don’t show you loved him. Get out with your pain.
                              Take him with you. Hold in quagmires. Oceans.
                              I would take him, the pain, into the car to shed
                              layers of oil-well darkness from my body. Then 
                              I would enter the home and pretend to housewife. 

At the gun and ammo store the clerk behind the counter excused the dripping
water from the ceiling, asked what I needed. I told him a rifle. I held the bolt-action
Winchester. I held a thirty-aught, and then a semi-auto AK-15 223.                                          
It was my farm. It was my problem. I imagined myself as a person who held a rifle
cavalier--Oh this? By the end of the visit, I was handed a card with the name of an Ex-
Marine that could take care of me.

                              Are we open to possession by the demons of others? He killed himself
                              on her birthday, New Years—some would call this a coincidence. 

There were deep rivets in the gullies of the groves. New signs
of rutting sandworms from outer space. Coconuts shucked
and broken open like sunflower seeds. Trails running from land
into the darkness of the sausage tree. An acrid aroma. We were 
beginning to grow concern as the signs of infestation worsened. 
How long until we are taken over? How long until others notice? 

                              Some work to erase the names of others. Some enter a gladiator
                              arena to battle. I said enough. I said peace and she turned away. 

My first few weeks on the farm I was alone. 
The dirt was old. Graying. And the trees were destroyed by 
a storm. I wasn’t looking in the right places. They were under.
Hidden. I didn’t even know they existed yet/what they were
or the damage they could do. I was naïve. A state 
that leaves me open to damage. 

                              She laughed. She drank and I began to erase myself from her life, crying-crying, 
                              scared of what she would do, knowing it would be bad for me. I returned a dish I  
                              once broke. A pillow I once stole. A home I once shared. I told her I was leaving.   
                              She laughed. She drank. I walked out on my life on New Year’s Day: He asked do 
                              I want to eat or be eaten, he tipped me over and leaked the infestations from my 
                              ears, reduced me to my shadows, he said this got way out of control, somehow I
                              saw myself—everything. I thanked him and began to wonder about synchronicity. 

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Cole W. Williams is a poet, essayist, and hybrid writer. Williams recently won the Under Review's annual chapbook contest for "The Pump" and was recognized by The Florida Review's Humboldt Prize for the poem "Sunset." Bottlecap Press will be releasing the chapbook "Dear Annette," in 2023. Williams attended the 2022 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference for poetry.

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