don’t bring your 6-year-old daughter to a wild horse action, just bring a horse home

← v21n3, Spring 2023

she will trace the shapes of scars

ask where each one came from

why are they called wild?

she will try to release each one

only after naming them thunder

cloud

and the one called poorly drawn stars

is the one she chooses

then asks about freeze marks

the burn to remove freedom

she will tame our gaze on raised skin

and the brand flinching

discipline refusing body

the wild not giving in

family childhood animals

Ibe Liebenberg

Ibe Liebenberg’s work has been published in Poetry , The Threepenny Review , Ecotone , and The American Journal of Poetry . A citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, he is enrolled in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He works as a firefighter, and is a lecturer at California State University, Chico.