She Talks ABout Her Goat in the Afterlife
Elizabeth P. Glixman

I have gone to Allah, the light is low.
The night with blue and black sky
Follows my mother’s gaze.
There is nothing in the distance but thunder and fire,
We all want rain.
The goat is in the yard.
“It was never her goat,” my mother says to my father.
“He was a stranger, a stray.
She took this goat and fed him.
He followed her around as if he was a dog.
That day he did not follow her close enough
Because if he had been close enough like earth is to a dead man
When the truck came
He would have been the one lying on the road.”
My father strokes my mother’s hands
she is wearing my skin and hair.
Billy keeps eating;
It is all he can do

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