They stand scattered and notfacing each other. Like black-eyedsusans lining the highway, or sistersangry in some small kitchen.The goats, they traipse a diagonalthrough knee-high meadow,following head to tail. Thenone decides to feed. Suddenlythey are strangers.But how elegant animals seemthese weeks after your funeral, eachquiet despite a whole field, contentwith any fresh mouthful.
The Horses Are Fighting
Jill Osier
Feature Date
- August 14, 2020
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Excerpted from The Solace Is Not the Lullaby, by Jill Osier.
Copyright © 2020 Yale University Press.
Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.
New Haven, Connecticut
The 114th volume of the Yale Series of Younger Poets
“[A] model of clarity and of the powers of brevity, as well as, more subtly, a quiet but no less persuasive interrogation of what we mean anymore by words like ‘knowing,’ ‘confession,’ ‘story,’ maybe even ‘poetry’ itself.”
—Carl Phillips
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