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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
The horse’s head looks more like the butt end
of an oar, squared off and wooden the way an animal’s is not.
Its mane is mangy; the mouth toothy; one white eye is wild.
The legs tangle at wrong angles and the body seems short.
This was a horse to shoot, but I sharpened my pencil instead,
and returned to my seat. Astride the beast, with hands like clouds
and checkered shirt, is a boy—not whipping his horse,
battering its belly with shiny spurs, or scouting the dusty plains
and bluffs for a good leap-off place. He’s smiling terribly.
Daniel Johnson’s first book of poetry, How to Catch a Falling Knife, is due this May. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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Draconian individual punishment distracts from systemic change and reinforces the cruelest and most racist system of incarceration on the planet.
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