Triptych for a Dairy Cow

Katie Beswick

I

Your baby falls from you, whole

and lies there like a dead thing,

wet, exhausted, though breathing,

thank God.

You lick her; your tongue thick,

removing the yellow

from every meaty part.

She finds your udder,

tilts her face, sniffs, hunting sweetness,

her mouth at your underside, grasps

for the hanging sustenance—

I know that surrender:

the first tug of needing;

like nothing so much as gravel

being sucked through a straw.

II

Alone in a small stall—its tall walls

are metal, enclosing,

the space clogged with old panic—

they’ve attached to you some instrument,

it is squeezing each raw teat again/again,

your calf’s empty caul still

hanging out the back of you,

a spent balloon.

Those hours, postpartum,

I squeezed my gold liquid

into tiny syringes,

and peed in a cardboard dish.

You let out a sound,

bass-toned, deliberate,

loud as a scream.

III

Your eyes are glossy spheres and know,

in the way an infant knows,

as I do;

light through the barn slats,

a human touches your baby

feeding her from an artificial teat,

its milk stored in a blue plastic tank.

I’m pouring your milk for my daughter,

who won’t drink it

she wants mine,

but anyway,

I’m heating yours,

breathing creamy animal fumes.

Cooling in the bottle,

your milk is glossy too.

KATIE BESWICK is a writer from south east London. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Ink Sweat & Tears, Dust Poetry Magazine and The Waxed Lemon, among others. Her debut chapbook is Plumstead Pram Pushers (Red Ogre Review 2024).