Livestock
- Order sold
- on the auction block.
- Cattle as collateral,
- holy fowl
- by the share,
- hogs
- and hens,
- and sorrel mares,
- howling dogs,
- sheep
- we keep kept,
- we shepherd the words
- chattel, dominion, value,
- fair sex.
- And the prairie wives—
- ice-flecked, blonde bonnets,
- cold bellies—
- lie
- on the precipice of sleep,
- while their
- wolven correlatives
- prowl
- the wilderness
- with child.