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Clade Song 16

Prairie Grasses

Imagine
a large
            warm-blooded mammal
            muscle and bone
            originate for moving
            grazing-slow or fear-
            fast across prairie grasses;
            and who birth their foals readied
            to run hours after first breath. 

Imagine
a large
            pharmaceutical company
            purchases mares to confine them
            in narrow stalls; regulate water
            intake; collect urine in  unique
            harnesses; keep them pregnant;
            take their long-legged foals
            days after birth to sell
            to rendering plants.

Imagine
you ask,
            as I did not, the origin
            of the estrogen in the pill
            I swallowed as
            treatment.

 

 
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Leigh Jordan lived in New York City until she was nine when her family moved to Sacramento. She graduated from El Camino High School, and then continued on with her education at San Francisco State University, where she received her B.A. in Anthropology and an M.A. in Anthropology from Sonoma State University. Her professional career of twenty-five years was spent in the field of Archaeology. She has been writing poetry on and off since she was fourteen. Those early poems were written for herself, her family and friends. More recently, however, she has started submitting poems for publication. Her poems have been published in The Story Teller; Stolen Light; Twychenham Notes; Clade Song; and, The Smalls Too.