Atokad Park: 1983 by Jeff Streeby

Atokad Park: 1983

by Jeff Streeby

We had twenty-three horses in training. Two were from the same farm. They could have been twins— both tall and gracile, both bright bays, both with a little strip and a snip, both with a wide flash of white at the right front coronet—except one was a four-year-old filly, flighty but gentle, and one was a rank and deadly savage— a two-year-old horse colt. They were stalled across the alley from each other. One night after I went home, John swapped them out “to see if I was really paying attention.”

I wasn’t.

Spring afternoon—

six black swans on the temple pond

elpmet
xis kcalb snaws

###
Jeff Streeby earned his MFA in Poetry from Gerald Stern’s program at New England College in New Hampshire. His poetry has appeared in Ginosko, Southwest American Literature, Los Angeles Review, Rattle, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, and many others. His poem “Biography” won the 2013 Provincetown OuterMost Community Radio Poetry Award. He is a Senior Lecturer in English and History at Assumption University in Bangkok, Thailand.