BY SHARON HASHIMOTO

Fukushima, Japan

That day, I stood—knees locked—on my four feet

to stand my ground as it began to sway.

I didn’t see but I smelled the change:

dirt littered with fallen swallows overwhelmed

by muddy ash. My herd wandered

through broken fences. Some lay

where they were tethered. Others died

with heads thrust through the holes

of the troughs, waiting to be fed.

On the dirt farm road, buses shuttled

our people away. Dogs, pigs, cats--

we were all left behind: only our voices

filled the air. Soon bodies lay

amid splintered boards and puddles.

Some of us survived on our own,

grazing the abandoned rice paddies.

We lifted our heads to bulldozers

and tractors hauling the dead

to burning pyres, inky columns

of smoke billowing in the wind.

Forty days later, my farmer came back.

The pastureland is overgrazed. Hungry,

I eat whatever feed he brings me

though white spots break out

along my flanks. With his Geiger counter

ticking, he strokes the place

between my ears.

Sharon Hashimoto's first book of poetry, The Crane Wife, the 2003 co-winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, will be reprinted by Red Hen Press in April, 2021. Her second collection, More American, won the 2021 Off the Grid Poetry Prize. Recent work appears in Barrow Street, Permafrost, and North American Review.

Process Note: It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster. "Nuclear Cattle" was written after reading some translated Japanese writers and asking myself how the animals would feel and respond to the on-going catastrophe.