Theory of War

ISSUE: Winter 2012

Admit coming upon the fallen horse at evening,
now asleep but withered, now reducing as you near, now
a dell pony at your feet beneath the alder dead,
admit it is too much to both see and bear. You must
either not see or not bear, or see and bear
some quickened portion, the portion allotted to say
this is simply the field
of what occurs on earth.

Katie Ford

Katie Ford is the author of four books of poems: Deposition (2002), Colosseum (2008), Blood Lyrics (2014), and If You Have to Go (2018), all published by Graywolf. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, the Paris Review, Ploughshares, Partisan Review, Poets & Writers, and Pleiades. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.