Katherine Smith

June

Once my life was horses
and the girls who loved horses: 

Melissa and Marble, Gavin and Ruby, Jan and Blue.
We rode to the creek bareback holding glass bottles 

of soda we chilled in running water. All afternoon,
we stood in the shade while the water cooled the fetlocks.

On the other bank, a barbed wire fence kept us out
of the resting pasture where waves

of clover rippled knee high. One of us hadn’t
got pregnant at sixteen, one of us 

hadn’t died of cancer, one of us
hadn’t run away from home, 

never to be found. We brushed horse
flies from glossy rumps long afternoons 

of now and now and now.

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Katherine Smith’s recent poetry publications include appearances in Boulevard, North American Review, Ploughshares, Mezzo Cammin, Cincinnati Review, Missouri Review, Southern Review and many other journals. Her short fiction has appeared in Fiction International and Gargoyle. Her first book, Argument by Design (Washington Writers’ Publishing House), appeared in 2003. Her second book of poems, Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press), appeared in 2014. Her third book, Secret City, appeared with Madville Press in August 2022. She works at Montgomery College in Maryland.