Banded Galloways
In a field on the side of the road, on the way
to Pomfret, before you get to the four way
stop sign where the Vanilla Bean Café is,
there’s a herd of cows that remind me
of Oreo cookies.
I like to stop there during the early
summer, when the grass and clover
are bursting from the ground full
of sweetness to listen to them huffing
as they snap mouthfuls of the good
stuff from the sward. The newest
members of the herd looking around,
each calf trying to figure out
what it’s supposed to be doing.
One day I expect hands to reach
down out of the sky, while I’m
standing there on the side of the field,
to lift each cow up one by one,
to twist them open and lick out
their frosting centers.
Beak Full of Time
The cock crows all day. Crowing, waiting to hear a reply
in the bird burbled heat of the sun-tripped afternoon, crowing
again. A sky full of leaves bathed and pierced by angled light,
perceived differently yet all the same chlorophyll-stuffed
green. A breeze shimmers the untouched blue. The fisher
humps across to the brush pile as the light turns pink
and plump rodents scramble deeper, desperate for the safe
dark embrace of the earth. The cock crows again.
Kat Terban is an AFAB gender-fluid, gray-aromantic, asexual person. Their work has been published in the Plum Tree Tavern, AZE Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, Eunoia Review, Little Death Literature, The Avenue, and Neon Mariposa Magazine. In addition, their work has been anthologized in Manchester Community College’s annual publication, Shapes. In early 2019 they received Manchester Community College’s Outstanding Young Poet award. In late 2019, they were chosen by a panel of judges to be a Connecticut Student Poet and they toured on the Connecticut Poetry Circuit in 2020. In March 2020 they were shortlisted in the 18th Annual BrainStorm Poetry Contest. They were invited to read their poem “Pandemic – COVID19” to a live audience as a guest on the first of Rattle Poetry Review’s weekly Poets Respond Open Mic podcasts and an excerpt of their poem “When the Interviewers Asked What They Did During the Pandemic” was featured on WGBH’s In It Together radio broadcast on 4/14/20. They are a member of the Connecticut Poetry Society.
