chemo sex

Betsy Johnson

and then
you say “I’m
not a man

who leaves
his wife
while she

has cancer”
which is how
a cow

appears
at the breakfast
table

putting
her neck
through

the barbed
fence
again

again
trying
to reach

for any
sweet
grass.


Betsy Johnson’s work has appeared in Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, AGNI (online), Hayden’s Ferry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and The Rumpus. A manuscript of her essays was a semi-finalist in the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize.