The Minnesota State Fair's Miracle of Birth Center, sponsored by Subaru
       

Before I smell it, I imagine
I smell it: copper-slick, torn.
Butter and musk. What gathers

in a working groin. The barn's
no different from outside, really—
foot-beaten and humid, maybe

a little more soiled—and inside, a cow
heaves curtains of red tissue
from her backside. Quilt of trembling

oil. Oh, that's just afterbirth, the vet
tells me. The cow's bored eyewhite
stark in her skull. Her chin fretted gossamer.

Nearby, a bursting rabbit endures waves
of toddler palm; if gentle, they receive
a blue ribbon (First Place in Not Hurting

Something Smaller Than You), and I think:
everything parts for children. Crowds. Knees.
Thin velvet of a lambscheek, for which

my hand also hungers—to touch
what is new and milk drunk. To cup
something pink and cropped, mysteriously

focal. A sign on the wall lists the times
of each new birth: 6:14 AM, three lambs—,
Becky, Delilah, Marge—that I can't see

through the kneeling team of boys
by the pen, their lager-yellow
crew cuts. Only the mother sheep, who

looms to the left. Her indecipherable eye
between bars.

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Copyright © 2019 J. Bailey Hutchinson All rights reserved
from Beloit Poetry Journal
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission