Margaret Draft ’13

Alumnae Poet

Margaret Draft is the author of Nowhere Was a Lake (Four Way Books, 2024). A recipient of the Emerging Artist Award in Literature by the St. Botolph Club Foundation, Margaret has also been awarded the Ethel Olin Corbin Prize and fellowships from The Frost Place for their Conference on Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, and on Poetry Daily. She lives in Bennington, Vermont. 

Select Poems

He found it in the pasture,

pulse fast, pawing hay.



He stood over the still

moving body, watching it turn



in the folds of wet soil,

and after hours of contemplation,



decided to give it sleep. He waited

one more day before burying it.



*



What do you do when a horse dies?

You hollow out the land,



you try to make enough space,

and when you think you have enough,



keep digging.

He said this because



he himself had to enter the hole

with the horse and shovel,



shift the legs, reposition the head.

 

—first published in Radar Poetry, Issue 30, 2021