Cow Tongue

By Amanda Dettmann

There was a Sunday when no one died
            and everyone sunburnt their hands. Us, with the babysitter,

            sliding our wrists through the farm metal fence
as if we were about to tap a hushed maple tree, cow

                        tongues like half-melted slabs of butter, licking
            the lonely living, this space a swollen cat’s cradle,

a summer hose spasming at the sight of a naïve mouth.
            I’ve wondered my entire life if we broke

                        in this barn—did that old overall man let it happen
            the way you see a red ant crawl into your sneaker

but you need to feel the heat—or did I just want to brag
            we were rebels, achieve something illegal to whisper

                        through the other fourth graders at recess, my lie curling
            like incense above the four square Cheeto dust arena.

I think I was secretly in love with my babysitter, her name ending
            in echo the way a buried hay bale catapults the top sun fried head

                        to freedom, or a phantom limb flicks the light switch
            in an unwalked room. She was an environmentalist

with extra curly hair, which reminded me of those glow-in-the-dark
            stars on my bedroom ceiling, a gentle bruising

                        to a supposed straightness.

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Amanda Dettmann is a queer poet, educator, and author of Untranslatable Honeyed Bruises. She earned her MFA from New York University and has received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her poems have been nominated for 2025 Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize, appearing in publications such as The Adroit Journal, Fence, Portland Review, and Verse Daily.