Laura Johanna Braverman
FULL MOON AND GALLOWAYS
The farmer shows me a hollowing-in by the iliac crest,
skin taut from the weight of the calf. ‘Soon –’ she says,
‘Next week is Vollmond.’ She brings out a box: puncher
to tag the new little ear, braided-rope bracelets with ties,
‘Just in case.’ One of three cows has never labored before.
During their confinement in the barn, I bring red apples
from nearby trees, the ground, and the market shelf.
I hold out the fruit in my palm. Between squares of teeth,
the first bite makes a resonant crack – flesh and seeds
crushed, turned to foam on their sandpaper-like tongues.
I wait with the mothers for their calves to come, stroke
broad foreheads, feel the flat of bone under dusty black
curls, alert to their sounds rising up the hill to the house.
Wait for the full moon to exert its pull – the bright globe’s
bringing forth. The old round of blood to milk and bone.
Laura Johanna Braverman is a writer and artist. She is the author of Salt Water (Cosmographia Books, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Reliquiae, Plume, Levure Litteraire, Rusted Radishes, New Plains Review, and California Quarterly, among other journals, and in the anthology Awake in the World, vol. II. She is currently a PhD candidate in poetry at Lancaster University. Austrian-American by birth and upbringing, she lives in Lebanon with her family.