Only a sheep goes
up any time
to find help or comfort
up it goes
through huckleberry
so thick you can’t crawl through
on all fours
Sheep become human
at night
fart and cough
it sounds like
some homeless shelter
a bad dream
you would think sheep pure
but they are paint-sprayed
to show whose they are
and Ray comes after them
pulls off tails and testicles
constricted
to make them fall
each ball is worth a dollar
Sometimes
such are the ways
of ancient hill climbers
Allan Johnston
Allan Johnston's poetry has appeared in Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, Rhino, Weber Studies, and more than forty other journals. He has received a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, Pushcart Prize nominations, and first prize in poetry in the 2010 Outrider Press Literary Anthology contest. He has published two books of poetry, Tasks of Survival, which appeared in 1996, and In a Window, published in 2018. He also has three chapbooks, Northport (2010), Departures (2013), and Contingencies (2015), all from Finishing Line Press. He teaches writing and literature at Columbia College and at DePaul University, both in Chicago.
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