by Amanda Stovicek
Your namesake is ugly, sallow and cataracted,
a pale gray color pretending to be blue.
Sitting in vitreous fluid, its slow jogging
movement doesn’t match your windy sway.
Its roots are clotted hooves, yours sunk in clay;
its masters are men, yours are the rains.
Mottled from sunrise, its vision sets in hellish,
blur. Red is not red to your namesake’s cones,
but green fields pastured with yellow heads—
it can spy that. Sagging moniker.
Vexed by your white wink, it thunks
toward you in pasture, determined
to eat your sunshine away.
And patient as you are, that eye isn’t.
A mismatched pair hears the crack
of the rifle, the spray of warm red,
and neither remains unchanged.
Amanda Stovicek is a poet and teaching artist from Northeast Ohio. She is the 2016-2017 Graduate Fellow at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. Amanda edits Voices of Dan Street, an online journal that showcases the work of students at the Summit County Juvenile Detention Center.