I S S U E  8

Zannah Kearns

Lamb’s Clothing

Nancy’s dad picks up the dead lamb by a foot,
runs his knife round each hoof and begins to tug,
hide-over-head—a toddler in a too-tight jumper,
cream fleece folding inside-out,

peeling pelt like cellophane, revealing skin as pink
as Angel Delight, leaving behind its shiny body,
sooty face. He tosses the carcass onto a sack,
turns to a crate and lifts up

a rejected lamb, knock-kneed and trembling;
starts to pull the still warm skin-graft over its head,
draping its length; it staggers under the weight
of the oversize hand-me-down, is lifted again,
into the pen of the dead lamb’s mother.

Her eyes stare down with a hard black glitter.
She stoops to sniff him tail to top—can this be?
At last, she nudges him towards her teat, glances
at girl and farmer who hug each other, before he nods,
wraps the sack and carries it out,

calling to his daughter over his shoulder
to remember the orphans before it gets dark.

Zannah Kearns is a freelance writer and editor and works in the charity sector. She co-hosts the Poets’ Cafe reading series in Reading.