Robinette Farms
by Monica Joy Claesson
At the edge of the goat enclosure, we sit among thistle
and bluestem, puff and pass in the last of the solstice sun,
far enough now from the celebration—the food vendors,
the folk band, the fairy lights, the welcome booth
where I snuck a wristband, the bar where I semi-confidently
ordered red wine, the old farmhouse where my friends
are spending the summer learning permaculture, where earlier
we brined cabbage for kimchi, left it in a bucket to bubble.
We are removed from it all by dark rows and rows of organic
beets and peppers and tomatoes. This is our paradise for a summer.
We laugh and cough and mind the electric fence, until eventually
we can’t resist the live cables buzzing beside us.
We all agree to hold hands so the shock
can pass through us all in one flashing instant, and I
am just a girl in Nebraska, young for a college sophomore,
and I’ve seen the ocean once, when I was three, and the mountains
once, when I was twelve, and the boy I like doesn’t like me back,
and no one believes me when I tell them what my future looks like,
so I’ve stopped telling them, and all I know is
how to keep a promise to myself, all I know is here,
gripping sweaty hands in the humming summer darkness,
trembling in wait for the shock to hit,
I trust this feeling with my life.