Jim Heynen was born on a farm in Iowa and attended one of the state’s last one-room schoolhouses. Educated at the University of Iowa as a Renaissance scholar, he turned to writing poetry, novels, nonfiction, and short fiction and spent a year translating Lakota songs. He is best known for his short short stories about “the boys,” and his many works include The Boys’ House: New and Selected Stories and Standing Naked: New and Selected Poems. A member of the faculty of St. Olaf’s College, he lives with his wife in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Photograph by Doug Kurata.

Sometimes a Sow

by Jim Heynen

Sometimes a sow
couldn’t have her young.
They’d catch
in the tight gate
of her womb
and she’d lie heaving
towards death.

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