This month's poem was chosen by Norman Hadley. After trawling through all the profile he chose a short list of five but chose this poem because:
"The first three stanzas have a McGoughian lightness of touch soused with sharp observational humour and the veining of scientific detail marbles the meat of the poem. Mandy just gets you comfortable with her gentle playfulness before smarting your cheek with the well-merited slap of the final stanza."

Find out more about Mandy and her work at
http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/mandycoe

THE WEIGHT OF COWS

Cows are impossibly heavy,
they are the dark matter
that astrophysicists talk of.
All the weight of the universe
can be accounted for, if
you include cows.

It is this weight that splays
hooves, deep into the mud,
draws milk down to bursting
udders, makes cow pats slap
the earth with uncanny force.

Even milked-out
they move heavily. Arching
knuckled backs under the sting
of the auctioneer’s stick, they buckle
and stagger as if their very bones
are recast from bedsteads
or rusted park railings.

To see a cow hoisted
into the air by one hind leg
is to witness
the death of a planet.