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From the archives

A Strange Road to Hell

Technology, culture and the march to World War One

Lax Americana

What happens if Donald Trump returns to the White House?

Gardens of Mourning

The vast, idealistic effort to bury World War One's fallen soldiers

Not So Stable

 

Sometimes when she stirs, he pauses

      (forgets what he is doing)

her unsaddled back un-brushed

his spurs of impatience upsetting her

how the evening sky darkens

a soft blue bleeding into mystic orange,

flaring red into starlit black cloak.

 

She knows her Master isn’t well

the way his knees rattle

how he buckles with pain

cancelling evening rides

(no more wild white daisies

no romp in Queen Anne’s lace

just quiet staring at uneaten food)

his jockey sweat, a salt taste mingling

with sweet smell of hay

still yearning, breathing

his heart frail like thin filament

a single light bulb flickering,

the shadow of her stirrup

a haunting noose image

swaying from barn rafters.

 

Debbie Okun Hill is past president of The Ontario Poetry Society. Since 2003, more than 235 of her poems have been published in 105 publications or websites including Vallum, The Windsor Review, Existere, Descant and Other Voices in Canada as well as Mobius, The Binnacle and Still Point Arts Quarterly in the United States. Tarnished Trophies (Black Moss Press, 2014) is her first trade book.

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