Sara E. Lamers

Afterbirth

  1. No one shielded her eyes when new goats
  2. slid out. Birth was brazen and raw, but quick.
  3. They stood up skittish, new wool slick
  1. with a fluid no one gave a name to.
  2. February, the barn packed in straw.
  3. She thought the mothers must grow tired
  1. of mice skirting floorboards, hoarding grain,
  2. a crust of ice on the drinking water.
  3. Her after school task: to heave those buckets
  1. against fence posts until the surface shattered.
  2. No respite until spring, the herd set to pasture,
  3. To clover with which they'd drug themselves.
  1. Then the barn pitch-forked clean,
  2. dank straw disturbed, the casting off.
Packingtown Review – Vol.4, Spring 2013
A Pushcart Prize nominee, Sara E. Lamers is the author of the poetry collection A City Without Trees (March Street Press) and the chapbook Applause: The Patron Saint Poems (Pudding House Publications). Other work has appeared in journals such as Fugue, The MacGuffin, Main Street Rag, and Rattle. She teaches at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI and holds an MFA in poetry from Purdue University.