After we’d killed the deer out on the highway
the cows would stop me staring, how their hides,
blotched like world maps, twitched ripples, the wide
swing of their tails as they chewed lovingly
at corn we filled the troughs with, the blue veins
bulging from their sacks, the sensual innocence
of handling a slobbery pink teat
and watching the tube bubble then run white.
At forty-six, still with my natural smile,
I’ve felt the vegan’s scorn and have indexed
the noxious scent of methane in one pile.
It ever weighs in with the generous monster
I’d stand beside in my mere needfulness.
Her weight could’ve crushed yet let me lean against her.

Michael Steffen lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has published in venues including Another Chicago Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Concord Saunterer, Harvard Review Online, Ibbetson Street, The Lyric and Taos Journal. His first book Partner, Orchard, Day Moon was published in 2014. David Ferry described the book as “keen with observation, of what things actually look like, what the wind feels like, how things grow and rot.