Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but   poison ivy
along its shoulders, hunched into fields, once stripped, clear
back when the Black Angus herd intervened;
sold off to cover a single semester of college tuition,
their rasps of papillate tongues became meat, sliced
in rasping bawls, no longer licking

Read the poem that won Plough’s 2024 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award.