Sarah Klein
giddy flocks with their mottled ragged skin
stretched over the hocks of horses the hot breath screaming
the thrill of the run of the chase the sharp hooves pounding
on a racetrack in a meadow the snorting and the stomping
a shotgun held up against a noble head as the blood flows
from the wound the mangled legs the whinnying
the dry wind that scuttles the remains of once-green plants
their dry brittle husks that whip in the whirlwind
the eye that rolls back in the head
the guttural cry that escapes the beast
a man on his knees, his head in his hands,
a hot shotgun abandoned in the dry desert sand.
***
Sarah Klein is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst comparative literature program. She has been published in Words and Images, the University of Southern Maine’s journal, and enjoys writing poetry of many different genres, both the morbid and the mundane.