When it is my turn to grip
goat’s warm and lumpy udders,
I pass, curl up on braided
rag rug in farmhouse cellar,
eye the garden on the shelf,
solar coins of carrots and
quartered spears of cucumbers
in forests of floating dill.
Judith—five boys, a baby
perpetually on hip—
shows me where pressure
cooker lid blew through ceiling,
holds my hand so tight mother
takes it back, time to go home,
my palms red, sore from turning
metal crank, throat numb. I eat
without shame each unfinished
portion the children leave on
bench, undeterred by musky
aftertaste and knobbed head of
disbudded giver of milk,
her saturnine green gold eyes,
bleat insistent: like me, like
me, like Judith, on front steps,
belled girl goat pacing her yard.
Tania Pryputniewicz is the author of November Butterfly (Saddle Road Press, 2014). When not making poetry movies or blogging at Tarot for Two and Mother Writer Mentor, Tania teaches a monthly poetry workshop for San Diego Writers, Ink. Poems are forthcoming in Everyday Haiku and The Journal of Applied Poetics.