When he was done arguing
he went to the barn, he had a wrench
crooked under his left arm.
(He’d been fixing the tractor
before the fight began).
The sow shuffled, idle in her stall.
He paused a moment, he put his wife’s
face on the sow and the sow’s
face on his wife.
When he was done beating
he scooped the sausage meat into a refuse bag
and went to bed.
In the coolness of the darkness
his wife curled round
him, her breath warm
on the nape of his neck.
Jenny Gray grew up in rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland. During her school years she wrote a monthly column for her local newspaper The Ellon Times. She read English with Creative Writing at the University of Chester. Since she graduated she has been travelling in Canada and working on her first novel.