to you horse
Sappho 87F
the backslash of boundary unjust
and not only for its drainage
of green
California the fingers
sustaining the weight of pressing nation
its back in knotted muscle
claims all the names of proximity
Oceanside, — Beach, — Beach, — Beach
meanwhile what of Tucson and hubris
ranging deeper
our mountains all the bodies
holding yarn cat’s cradle over the desert
where maybe a hare looks skyward once
and wonders if the strings flying
over the peaks will this
time mean water or air
Kate Partridge is the author of the poetry collection Ends of the Earth (U. of Alaska Press, 2017) and two hybrid chapbooks. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, FIELD, Pleiades, Colorado Review, Yale Review, and other journals. She is a graduate fellow at the University of Southern California, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature, and she co-edits Switchback Books. 
