by Jim Ross
Thoroughly Asleep in The Barn
for Jen Rayne
All backstretches lead back to three[1], to three
all fall back upon, thoroughly
bred in rain and cloud
and through rain
and cloud, the horse, in England, dreaming
mother steppes, high passes
leading from scrub to grass
to green so thick and rain knotted
to earth, horses plow
green back, a broad green
that stretches back
to where once kind
and kin, in abandon, romped
before bugs or break maidens
or tracks or tacks
and harness strapped to the back
of an animal so powerful
only the morning
line chasing the constellations
back is as wise
as the mind that knows the value
of legs, of going to
and from and back, up
and down in the heather stretching
on forever, forever like a memory
recalling itself from the aether, the dna
dreaming of Asian weather
the backstretches of its mother’s mother’s
mother, the father, whether
the rain slaked or whether the sun lathered
wisdom against the hide, a thought
inside a horse’s mind.
[1] All modern day thoroughbreds can be traced back to England, where horses from Asia and the Middle East were bred with English mares.
Cassandra Whitaker is a trans writer from the rural south. Their work has been published in Little Patuxent Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Daily Drunk, & Anti-Heroin Chic,among other places.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding public health research career in hopes of resuscitating his long-neglected right brain. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in the past six years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and photography in over 175 journals on five continents. Publications include 580 Split, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Feral, Hippocampus, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Lunch Ticket, Manchester Review, Newfound, Stonecoast, The Atlantic, and Typehouse. He’s published photo essays in Kestrel, Litro, New World Writing, Sweet, and Wordpeace. He’s also published photo essays using old postcards in Barren, Ilanot Review and Palaver (forthcoming). Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals and grandparents of five—split their time between city and mountains.