The poem starts with a plain, almost messy scene: a group of people eating a whole hog that hasn't been cooked all the way through. They tear off strips anyway, juices running down their chins, enjoying the charred, crunchy skin. The details are physical and a little uncomfortable, and the speaker doesn't look away from them.
Then the poem turns to a young man who has just graduated. At 21 he pictures his future as an open road, clean and wide. Set beside that image, the pig becomes "this hulking corpse," something heavy and unfinished that the group is feeding on. The final lines, "neither raw / nor cooked," seem to describe the pig, but they also fit the young man, who is no longer a child and not yet fully formed. The mood is quietly unsettled. The poem enjoys the meal and also admits how strange and bodily it is, and it hints that the future may be less tidy than the road he imagines.