Road Trip (pastoral)

It’s a huge plantation

and you are its animals

the tall trucks

smelling of fear

the buildings

there is no returning from

they will take you apart

limb by limb

find a use

for everything

there’s a heaviness

in the air

like fine drizzle

as you speed past fields

where bone-weary cows

are stacked like dollar signs

or moving in slow lines

to be milked.

Alison Glenny lives on the Kāpiti Coast, apart from road trips. They’re the author of three collections of prose/poetry, most recently /Slanted, which was published by Compound Press in 2024.