This week, one of my poems is featured at Pure Francis.

Update, April 20, 2013:

The site seems to be gone, so I’ll post the poem here:

Fenced

Caught in the corral, they circle, streaming,
nostrils stung by smoke. A field burns
down the road, crackling, the late air

swarming, horses fretting the rumpled earth.
The roans and sorrels, blacks and bays
mill and sidle, stamp and snort.

Flanks twitch. Eyes flash white.
Gusts carry the soot over the frightened
and then away, swept on an updraft.

Feel the shiver—their heavy bodies tense.
I’d let them loose
to run from the snap and singe.

A girl, I loped through orchard rows,
wanting to hold real reins,
leather in my hands.

In scabby pastures, I searched
for any diamond
white beneath a forelock.

The sky smolders. Fire shudders
to die. Last summer’s harvest
ends with charred ground.

We are heat and ash and wind.
We are hooves pounding.
We are the knot.

“Fenced” previously appeared on the Pure Francis website.