The Horses Are Fighting

Jill Osier

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.

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Jill Osier was born in Iowa in 1974. She is the author of the poetry chapbooks from, Should Our Undoing Come Down Upon Us White, and Bedful of Nebraskas. She lives in Alaska.

Cover of Jill Osier's The Solace Is Not the Lullaby

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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