Zachary Bos
Lamb Stew

Tonight, I will not have to boil stones,
play-act at making a dinner while
promising bananas in the morning,
or have you swallow hot water soup
and eat biscuits of clay, butter, and salt
baked crisp out in the sun, until you fall
asleep where the sorghum spills from sacks.

Let us make lamb stew. If we do not die
today, we shall live, for another four,
to pray for democracy, that we might
vote for the justice and freedom of bread.
Stop rocking. Let us take this chair, our lamb—
the leather has to soak for twelve hours
over the coals of smashed-up legs of wood.

_ _

Zachary Bos is completing an MFA in Poetry at Boston University. A founding member of the Boston Poetry Union, he is at present at work on a translation from Spanish of Vicente Huidobro’s 1939 novel Sátiro.

<< Back to Issue 13, 2009