The dirty cow still doesn’t move.
Yellow, dusty sunbeams lean
heavily on a window screen
where flies make loud, impatient love.

Now a rust-brown monochrome,
the old barn’s wooden planks hang down
in splinters from its rotten crown
like teeth cracked on an old comb.

by Cara Valle

Original bio from the Spring 2015 edition:

Cara Valle first encountered poetry in the bathroom, where as a child she hid to flee her studies, and where her family kept a few little decorative books. Poetry continues to offer a brief daily recess, not from learning math, but rather—humorous twist—from managing the toileting and diapering of young children.

This poem first ran in the Spring 2015 edition of Grub Street Grackle. It appears here online for the first time.

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