John at Suffolk Downs
FROM THE ONLINE CHAPBOOK THE JOHN AND MIM POEMS
John at Suffolk Downs
Miriam Levine
I bet on Eyes of Love to win against maidens like her who had never won.
She’d “break her maiden,” if she did, a friend in the know says.
Males can also be maidens if they’ve never won; losing makes them
virgin, in name; though of course, only fillies have hymens.
And those, you must know, can be broken. Jockey Piermarini
may have shed hers riding—I’m straying. I was Eric Barbaran
who took Eyes of Love down the backstretch. She broke clean,
gained on the curve, broke free, came home, came first, so fast
she blurred; slowing, came clear: thighs glistened red, neck frothy with sweat.
The young Bay, burnt sienna shading to black, and darker black in the crest,
pays and pays, cools down, dips the long funnel of her head, dense tail
arched at the dock, wild plume of hair down from the spine.
The John and Mim Poems
Miriam Levine
2026
The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.