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AGAINST PASTORALS I’d lay my hand on her warm hide and inside her a calf thrashed like a carp. And a hoof would kick my palm, a splash no one else could hear. I’d leave to feed the newborns, able to turn but just barely, plastic tags popped through their ears and black scabs in between where I burned off their horns, white nubs soft as roots. That scorched fur stank like human hair. I turned and knew what I had to celebrate. Outside I saw our pastures, fences, the gates that connected it all, and the stock pond, brackish water where the cows would stand for hours swatting flies, a kind of time their tails kept, no different than the piece of straw in my mouth, a dirty reed I sucked and blew, tuneless.  ...

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