Farm Music
Juan Mobili
The farmer’s cow enjoys the farmer’s cello,
her milk tastes like an adagio written
by a composer on the run.
The farmer’s children eat their porridge,
they write poems about the silence of the fields
and the dark spirit that sings in bales of hay.
The hens worry about them as much
as they do every time the farmer
sharpens his wife’s knives.
There’s little else the farmer notices
while he tunes his cello, his children
hum songs in their room about
through which window they will escape,
but no one listens. Rust gathers
when he doesn’t pay attention.
Many would not think about the smoke
rising from the chimneys in the camp,
dumbfounded as cows lost in their reverie.
We will chew on grass, oblivious to the world.
Only hens mourn what happens to their eggs.
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Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires, and adopted by New York. His poems appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, The Worcester Review, and The Banyan Review, Monotiths (Australia) and Impspired (UK), among many others. His work received an Honorable Mention from the International Human Rights Art Festival, and has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net, in 2020 and 2021. His chapbook, “Contraband,” will be published in 2022.
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