James Garza

 
 

 Q:
  
 is there something erotic about destroying the
 environment?
  
  
 A:
          yes
  
  
 we roll up our sleeves past the shoulder
  
          & impishly 
  
                            plunge arms into 
                                                     the cow
  
  
 our fingers meet by chance
                           (in the reticulum)
  
         & we look up
  
                         
 and I think that’s how you know
  
  
                                                      you know?
  
                           out of milk comes sturdiness
  
  
  
         & sturdiness begets the moan    

James Garza is a writer and translator whose work has appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Black Bough and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. His translation of Itō Shizuo’s ‘Going Home’ won the 2019 Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation. Twitter: @GarzaWords.