Bacon

Posted on July 28, 2013 Updated on July 28, 2013

BACON

by

Shelby Stephenson

Did Lord Bacon write the works attributed to Shakespeare?

I do not know much more than this: bacon’s
The back and sides of the shoat, cured by salting and drying.
(We had a salt-box in the right-hand corner of the corn-crib.)

I had an FFA project one time − a baconer.
Her name was Shelby’s Lady.
She was a pedigreed Duroc.
Billy Wright Stephenson grew her from a piglet to a nice-sized pig
And he brought her to me in a hog-box.

My word! Carolina Pride!
Oscar Mayer Delicious Hand-Trimmed, Super Thick Cut Applewood Smoked!
Hormel Natural Choice; Uncured Smoked Duck Bacon; FUD Tocino Original Sliced Bacon;
King Cotton Hickory Smoked Bacon; Wright Bigger, Better Bacon; My Essentials Hickory Smoked Bacon; Smithfield Naturally Hickory Smoked; Gwaltney Hardwood Smoked
Premium Sliced Bacon; Farmland Foods; Plumrose USA; Butterball Turkey Bacon; Tyson Foods; John Morrell; Blue Ribbon Bacon; Boss Hog Beef Bacon; Bacon Ranch Crunch; Bakon; Boar’s Head; America’s Favorite Bacon; Rogue-Voodoo-Bacon-Ale; Baconnaise; Candied Bacon.

I can hear my mother say
Shub, get me some streak of lean to cook with the turnips − fresh hogmeat’s better than cured.”
Frankly I prefer side meat − fatback.

Bio:

Shelby Stephenson’s Family Matters:  Homage to July, the Slave Girl won the 2008 Bellday Poetry Prize, Allen Grossman, judge.