Matthea Harvey, this year’s winner of the Claremont Graduate University’s Kingsley Tufts Award, is author of three books of poetry and a teacher of poetry at Sarah Lawrence. She stopped by Zócalo’s offices to read from Modern Life, a New York Times Notable Book of 2008.

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To read the poem, follow the link below.

Implications for Modern Life

The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a
little meat sunset. I deny all connection with the ham flowers, the
barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets
in the blood-red road. I’ll put the calves in coats so the ravens can’t
gore them, bandage up the cut gate and when the wind rustles its
muscles, I’ll gather the seeds and burn them. But then I see a horse
lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleep-
ing, I will make you be sleeping. But if I didn’t make the ham flow-
ers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up,
dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river,
your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower
your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you
fresh hay.