September 2023

The calf’s jaw feels gold-heavy.
When I cup her chin,
it glows slick with hunger.
An eagerness to savor
sits in the upwards slant
of her wide eyes.

Her bull’s breath
heats my palm, condenses,
leaves a single drip of water
sliding against my wrist.
Within it, I can see
the small circle of the sun
reflected back at me,
as it slowly sets.

Two small dimples sit
where she was dehorned, hours after birth.
Dark feminine eyelashes, hot manly exhales,
I see in her a duality, so young she is still
part heifer, part bull, not yet re-signified.

I feel it in myself, too, as I
midwife a milking cow with
my gruff, calloused hands.

When her nose touches mine,
rife with presence,
it fills with an earthy sharpness
keen to begin a lifetime grazing,
head bowed, humbly.
To wean her from suckling,
she wears a spiked nose ring,
round and protruding,
that startles away the other cows
when it presses against
their soft bellies.

Her yearning, so instinctual,
was not built for bottle-feeding.
She juts her head forward,
lips curled and ready for attention,
towards me, instead.

My hands outstretched, I hold her head,
bearing her weight while she drinks.
I can feel her heartbeat through her neck
as I keep it tilted, unstrained,
pointed safely toward the sun as it sets,
the sky softening into flecks of gold against the dusk.

 

 

 

 

Emma Berver is a current student at Smith College pursuing a double major in English and Spanish along with the Poetry Concentration. She recently completed an internship at The Word Works, a poetry publication. Her work is forthcoming in The McNeese Review.

 

 

after Gwendolyn Brooks after Terrance Hayes

I think about what it means to be a ‘we’
it requires a closeness tested and real

to feel time passing and the fire still blazing uncool-
ed and unbent a partnership unspent ‘we’

survives and doesn’t go out with a hit of the lights left
to their own devices ready to school

the ‘I’s in a trust that resists rust we
stay together, ride together, in each other we live and lurk

forever we lie within each other late-
nt in a love so blatant we

savor the taste of each other strike
‘n out together- we are tethered on this unstraight-

end path all rickety and smattered with cracks we
fill them in together as we sing

songs outta tune lathered in sin
we croon, ella lo que quiere es salsa*, we

feel our grins spreading, all our thin-
king needs to stop lets get our drinking on- hide the gin

it’s for breakups and we
are not there yet because we are jazz

not built to last but meant to be had like a summer fling in late June
on a never ending loop and over in the blink of an eye we

are made up of a you and I even if one of us is to die
‘we’ remains a truth of a love gone too soon.

 

 

 

Kamilah Mercedes Valentín Diaz is a chronic over thinker and the author of Moriviví: To Have Died yet Lived, her debut poetry collection with Alegría Publishing. Originally from Puerto Rico, Kamilah has tons of experience with change, but during the pandemic she was forced to sit still. With so much time to spare and her mental health circling the drain Kamilah found refuge in writing. Her family, sheer stubbornness, therapy, and writing journey helped her come back to life. As a college senior attending Purdue University, Kamilah is studying Political Science with plans to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing after graduation.

 

(*from ella lo que quiere es salsa, by Victor Manuelle)