Poetry |

“Cow Magnet”

Cow Magnet

 

When a cow wouldn’t eat

They’d make her

 

Swallow this big magnet

Shaped like a vitamin capsule

 

Checking first to see whether

She already had one inside her

 

By passing a compass

Under her belly

 

We’d pick it off the side

Of the metal filing cabinet

 

It was stuck to in order

To hold something that

 

Could and heavy

It was brand new

 

But seemed corrupted

By where it was going

 

To be going soon

But it was proven

 

To save lives (aka money)

The length of rusted wire

 

Or the roofing nail

That would have pierced

 

The walls of her heart

Would be drawn

 

To the magnet instead

That that would happen

 

In the dark of an actual

Body was impossible

 

To believe but

We believed it

 

But only when the vet

Let us hold the compass

 

 

Contributor
Austin Smith

Austin Smith grew up on a family dairy farm in northwestern Illinois. He is the author of two poetry collections, Almanac and Flyover Country, both published in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. He is a recipient of Wallace Stegner Fellowship and an NEA grant in prose. He teaches poetry, fiction, environmental literature and documentary journalism at Stanford University.

Posted in Poetry

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