“The Lawnmower Goat,” by Aaron Lee Moore

Aug 20th, 2022 | By | Category: Poetry

Any farmer will tell you:
Nothing clears land quite like a goat,
Save for a Bobcat—
The 3650 Utility Vehicle—not the mountain lion.

So when the lawnmower finally kicked the bucket
And times were tough, my father
Thought it best to invest instead
In an Oberhasli goat
Then stake him out in segments
Along the front and back lawn.

But come to find out a buck—not a wether—
Loves to just piss all over himself,
Potent goat piss running down his beard—
Irresistible perfume for the lady goats,
Nature allegedly says.

We lived in a glen surrounded by cornfields:
Crap corn, fertilized, fodder for cattle,
And the wind blew ferociously down from the hills,
Circulating that malodorous scent all over our farm
And creation.

For weeks we ruminated, marinated in the scent of goat pee,
Carried aloft by the wind like fluttering dandelion seeds,
So pap eventually scrapped the idea and the goat,
Selling him off to the kindly owners
Of a nice Greek restaurant,
And next week pap just set the lawn on fire.

————

Aaron Lee Moore is an Associate Research Fellow in the Department of Comparative and World Literature at Sichuan University, where he’s required to periodically publish poetry in passionate praise of Mao Zedong, our once and future king. Previous publications include Appalachian Journal, Southern Literary Journal, Cold Mountain Review, Toad Suck Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Sandy River Review, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, Comparative Literature: East and West, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Collected Essays of Foreign Languages and Literatures, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, Deep South, Ascent Aspirations, Illumen, Open Minds Quarterly, Stray Branch, and others.

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