I see glittered carriages sprinkled through Central Park
being pulled by horses that remind me of the Midwest,
not the steroid-juiced, blender-bred racetrack specimens,
not the ponies that granddaughters of Fortune 500 CEOs
have grown out of, but something in between

Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square
in an alley repurposed as a stable
I can smell before I can see,
a single AC unit
jutting out the only window,
a stallion with his sun-stuffed
snout pressed against the cool air,
legs stomping in the mildest satisfaction

interrupted by the stablemen
who guide it back into a steamy prison,
and I hear my friend complain,
“They aren’t supposed to live like that,”
and only then do I consider
these obvious snippets of suffering.

– Dylan Tran