Good ones, he says, proper goats are
ones with beards on their chins
and sticky out ears on their long faces.
They’re like sheep, Daddy, but they’re
goats. Goats. You know, they’re goats, like
on that school residential trip you went on to
a farm somewhere in Wales for a week,
Tragoze, I think, where that farmer, the one with
grey in his beard and age on his tummy took
one look at you on the Monday
and said, you look like one of our goats.
Tuesday to Friday, you were called
Goat Boy and
one of the girls said she’d never kiss you
and made goat noises in your eyes and
the farmer patted your head like, well, a
goat and you still wish, how, instead of dwelling
on the loneliness that grew into
anger
that week, you spent the time looking at
Graeme’s face
over
and over
to allow you to write about it in better detail.

Carl Burkitt 2024