beat the moon backwards

slogged in salted dew

the ticker tape in my head

on overtune

to beat the moon

backwards

before we were flung

too far, before

either of us

was a hamster

on a loop

in fevered wait

Wanda Morrow Clevenger wrote eight poems in a handful of months in 1974; thirty-four years later she returned to writing. She has since placed over 467 pieces of work in 158 print and electronic literary journals and anthologies.

In August of 2013, while compiling the manuscript for this book she fell ill with pancreatitis, further complicated by necrosis in the following nine months, and wasn't expected to survive. One year later, almost to the day, she sat down to finish where the hogs ate the cabbage.

She has her husband to thank for the title.