Bedding Ritual of the American Farmer

Are your fingertips adept enough

to guide the yellow yolk

from a puncture in the amnion

Can you feel in your hand the resistance

in a lamb’s throat      pressing as you are

with balling gun and bolus

Do you know how often to dip your blades

so the only thing you spread is your

careful cutting—never disease, never rust

What percentage of berries do you crush

what yield of pears lost to bruises

and how many cannibalized kits

Are your arms strong when they reach

curving to the breech      and is each

and every hock, tendon, degree of turning a miracle

Can you thumb and pinch the buds

the cotyledons growing strong under your gaze

along your metered days and cloched nights

Might these bare-rooted saplings become a forest

when you will it, pluck it down and then distill it

into essences of itself again

When you hold the syringe between calves

do you keep your sharp teeth from piercing the

barrel and do you stop your saliva from running over

How tearfully do you exalt each sour cherry

each gram of seed, each rainfall

each gravid nut, each frost, hawk, snake

These are the measures we’re taking

and counting up on so many rough fingertips

on gnarled hands that can bring life to infinite bodies

This is the bedding ritual of the American farmer

the rubbing of dirt, germ, chaff like a fondling

and the hard-earned worship of every growing inch

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A. Jenson is a trans, non-binary writer and artist whose most recent works appear in 2024 issues of Door Is A Jar, The Bitchin' Kitsch, and NYU's Caustic Frolic.