Breach

Breach Kate DeLay (bio) Soon, the calf across the field vanishes beneatha long tenor note &the umbilical cord gives way. The blackened iodine of it weepslong-awaited rain into a coffin of mud. Her mother's body bellowingall the while, every lurch & lean of it. Her fourstomachs & hunger. Her blood after blood.Her bellow becomes the shapeof a calf she can't swallow the sound of a branch she can't unsnap the child of a breath she can't recirculate.Her voice reverberates inside the exposedribcage of County Road 4 carrion, picked overby vultures. Rattles & twangs the fencerow, strumming the air. O love that will not let me goThere's nowhere for that sound to belong in her. No throat toclose it in. I carried you this far I carried you [End Page 257] Kate DeLay Kate DeLay is a poet from Tennessee. Her work can be found or forthcoming in The Iowa Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Quarterly West, swamp pink, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2023 William Matthews Poetry Prize, selected by Diane Seuss. A former editor of Black Warrior Review, Kate is currently attending the University of Alabama's MFA creative writing program.