She thrusts her muscled arm into the frantic mare’s
rectum while I struggle with the twitch tightened
on the upper lip. The wooden handle rasps my palm.
The mare bashes into the wall. Her new colt, safe
in an adjoining stall, nickers fearfully.
Her dark hair tossing like the mare’s mane, she
says “I can do this,” grabs the twisted gut and swivels,
a sound like a squeezed balloon. I’m jerked
off my feet and now it’s done. The mare
white-eyed, stands trembling while we high five,
two women after midnight. “If I wasn’t on call,”
she says. I nod. The men would have ordered “clinic,”
loaded her, foal and all, following protocol
for such emergencies, or so we like to think.
Three exhausted females in a torn-up stall,
Straw scattered everywhere like confetti.
Joan Colby has published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, Gargoyle, Pinyon, Little Patuxent Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic and others. Awards include two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature. She has published 20 books including Selected Poems from FutureCycle Press which received the 2013 FutureCycle Prize, and Ribcage from Glass Lyre Press which has been awarded the 2015 Kithara Book Prize. Three of her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and another is among the winners of the 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. Her newest books are Carnival from FutureCycle Press, The Seven Heavenly Virtues from Kelsay Books and Her Heartsongs just out from Presa Press.. Colby is a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and an associate editor of Good Works Review.
Website: www.joancolby.com.
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Twitter: poetjm.