In the Dirt

By GRANT KITTRELL

I took a drive out to The Gallimaufry Goat Farm and was
struck by the vast assortment of goat life in one place.
Goats who’d go shock-still when startled, like a bolt
through the head, fall stiff as taxidermy to the ground.
Others, preferring a higher form of life, would scale the
argon trees, hoof the branches like acrobats, munch away
at leaves while visitors meandered below. Other goats,
the most peculiar kind of all, marched around bleating
in the voices of men. Some goats were just normal goats.
The whole combination of them in one place left me
starry-eyed and awestruck. This crazy little farm with its
hodgepodge of goats represented, in my mind, every facet
and variety of human existence, a universal model for the
living world—I was all wrapped up in metaphor! And I
was just about to figure the meaning of it all when a well-
endowed buck, trunks for horns, came by and knocked
me in the dirt. One goat who’d been grazing nearby
witnessed the scene and fainted on the spot. Another
bounded off a high branch, glided down and hovered in
the air just overhead. He looked down at me, stoic-like it
seemed, with his panoramic pupils, and screamed.

Grant Kittrell is the Poetry Editor for Fiction Fix.  He was nominated for Best New Poets 2014, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Heavy Feather Review, Poemeleon, Magma Poetry, Perversion Mag, and Barely South Review, among others. He teaches English at Virginia Western in Roanoke, VA. www.grantkittrell.com

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