“Farmed Out” by Katrina Irene Gould

Ever wonder about the person who grows “your potatoes and greens”? How they spend their days and cold-cold nights? How they rise “earlier even than the crows” to a “black sky” to plant and harvest and plant and harvest in a never-ending cycle of work and work and more hard work? Katrina Irene Gould provides a glimpse of the grower’s life in her new prose poem, “Farmed Out.” What’s “love” got to do with it? the speaker wants to know.  —Court Harler

Soft-gray dreams give way to a black sky, pinprick stars, a new moon. Long johns, scratchy wool socks, boots she’s learned to upend and shake after that one squishy-mouse time—never again, thankyouverymuch. The iris bulbs in the mudroom fail to cheer her. They wait, as she does, gnarled and dirty, for when the sun will unfurl their impossible, velvety, muzzle-soft petals.

You’d like to think the hush of the barely-morning still shakes awe into her, but today the barnyard is a frozen sea, her careful steps—she’s awake earlier even than the crows—compelled by habit and obligation. So what if your potatoes and greens weren’t harvested with love most days? Who else do we ask to love their work so much that in the consuming of it, you feel their care? That can be your dream: that in this coal-black morning, a person has risen to make you feel loved.

KATRINA IRENE GOULD has spent thirty fulfilling years counseling in Portland, Oregon. ​Her writing ​has appeared in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Gilded Weathervane, HerStry, Glacial Hills Review, Mukoli, Literally Stories, and others. Gould examines our knotty experiences in hopes of helping us all to hold our struggles more lightly.

Featured image by Sonny Mauricio, courtesy of Unsplash.