On the surface, the poem watches bacon fry in a pan. But the title, "Grief Bacon," tells us the cooking is really a way of looking at loss. The speaker follows the strip of fat as it sputters, curls, shrinks and turns brittle, and each comparison pulls it toward something sadder or more uncomfortable: a "spent cock," a drought-struck leaf, the cover of an old pulp magazine. Everything is losing life, force or freshness.
The turn comes with the address "ah bacon," where the tone softens into something like a sigh. The speaker imagines bringing the bacon home as a flag draped over a coffin, its red and white stripes making the image of military mourning. The last image is stranger and more private: a rash fed by "nervous nails," scratching that only makes it worse. The mood is raw and restless. Grief here is not noble or quiet. It is physical, a little ugly, and impossible to leave alone.