Barbaro

Lyn Lifshin is the author of many books of poetry, including Another Woman Who Looks Like Me (Black Sparrow at David Godine), selected for the 2007 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence. She lives Vienna, Virginia.

A Scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream on His Forehead: Barbaro’s Early Years
April 29, 2002
When I Think of Barbaro’s Birth
Feathers Cushioning Barbaro’s Hooves Inside the Mother’s Body
As Barbaro Twisted Towards his Mother’s Milk
On That First Morning
Early Days in the Paddock
On the Day of the Longest Light
On Days Like That
Barbaro and the Other Colts
The Mysterious Eye
No Wonder Some Grooms Always Spent a Little More Time with Him
On a Day it Seemed the Planets and Stars Chose
Still Un-Named, Know as “La Ville”
One Groom’s Song
Bringing Barbaro to Florida
Inside the Barn, Clomp of the Yearlings
First Yearling Days in Florida
Those Nights in the Stall
When I Think What Her Jockey Said About How Easy it was to Take Out
Ruffian, I Could Put Barbaro’s Name in Instead
Moving on to Fair Hill
The Sparrows Saw Him
A Horse that Transformed You
On a Horse Like That
This Night that the Horse that Can’t Be
When You See a Horse Glistening in the Morning Light
Before the Race
In the First Races
And Here Comes Barbaro: The Kentucky Derby
As Blossoms Rose and Faded
The Derby
Only One of Six
At the Half Pole
Four Golden Hooves Glowing
Barbaro Breathing Fire
After the Derby
After the Derby
Third Third Saturday in May (Just Before the Preakness)
Before His Last Race
On the Day of the Preakness
Before the Preakness
Third Saturday in May, the Preakness
As if Running was Breath: the Preakness, the Accident
Day After Day He’d Been Pointing Toward This
Checked, No One
After he Broke Thru the Gate, Reloaded
Suddenly the Jockey Felt a
A Blurred Image
A Horse on Three Legs
As Barbaro Writhed
The Tarp
Loading the Ambulance
A Horse Not Ready for the Barns of Darkness Under the Earth
Barbaro was Still Shaking
As the Police Escort Followed the Van Over
While his Life Hung like Petals in Ice
Lace of Bones, Tendons and Ligaments: Barbaro’s Surgery
Nobody was About to Put this Horse Down Without Giving him a Chance to Live
When he Came to
The X-Rays Looking More like a Cross-Section of a Bridge Truss
Though he Almost Jogged Back to his Stall
Because Prado Couldn’t Talk About Barbaro Without Crying
Because You’ve Fallen in Love with what You Shouldn’t
At Night Along the Fields, his Trainer
As if Asking “What’s Next”: June
Some Nights in Intensive Care at New Bolton Center
As if he’s Asking What’s Next
When they Put a TV in Barbaro’s Stall
For the Belmont
If Barbaro was to Not Make it
In the Hospital Barn at Night
So Many Night in the Barn
Sleeping with Horses
You Need a Miracle to Get Through This: July
Bad News, Leaking Out Slowly
It Took Longer to Recover from Anesthesia from this Latest Procedure
This Rollercoaster to Death, this Hoping, Waiting
Laminae
Will the Bones Heal Before the Hardware Begins to Loosen?
On this Almost Dog Day of August
Barbaro’s Hoof
Barbaro in the Light, Glistening and Dripping: August
 Every Time his Trainer Walks into Barbaro’s Stall
 The First Day Out, Barbaro Grazing
 Video of Barbaro in the Grass
 Some Nights Barbaro Dreams
 Another Barbaro Dream
 First Day Out in the Rain
 August, Somewhere Past Sparkling Lakes
Against All Odds: September, October
When You Start to Feel September in the Air
On the Metro Slicing October Fog
The Leaf Falling Music
Mid October
Past the Maples: November
Late Fall, Tumbling into Winter
On These Cold Days, November
November 20, 2006
Barbaro Dawn, Breeders Cup
Why Do These Horses Mean so Much?: December
Camellias Blooming Thru Warm Winter
Because he was Standing There
Before the Moon Rises
Grown Lovers of the Black Stallion and Man of War
Barbaro in December Rain
No Bandages on Barbaro’s Hind
In the Last Weeks of Growing Dark, in Earth too Hard for Barbaro’s
On the Last Day of the Longest Night
On the Day of Least Light
Time with Her Slow Spoon
In the Longest Blackness
On the Day Before Light Comes Home, December 21
Winter Solstice
The Final Miracle, Fiction: January

Before Any Snow
Record Breaking Warm
Brushing Barbaro
Before Rain Turns Ice Pellets
Crow Thursday
On the First Day of Snow
White Day
Almost Half a Year Since the Bad News of Laminitis
When he Stepped to the Door
He is Getting Up and Down on his Own
On the Last Weekend
To Write a Book About Barbaro Before January 29
How Many Times Can One Get Punched in the Face and Still Continue
On this Dark Sunday
Even the Last Morning
Most of the Time he was Happy
Beyond Pain: Barbaro’s Death
We Don’t Choose, it Chooses Us
On That Day
Hearing the News
On the Night of Barbaro’s Death
Others on the Last Night Think of
For Dr Richardson, Those Other Mornings
On the Second Day After Barbaro’s Death
The Nights After Some Scrolled Blogs like They did Every Day, as if the Death Could Not be Real
A Horse can Never Tell You his Dreams
Someone Says Some Horses
The Sad Songs Haunt the Longest: Beyond Brokenness
Weeks After the Eclipse Awards
As the Forced Wild Plum Opens
Barbaro is No Longer in his Stall in New Bolton
Watching Barbaro’s Siblings
Days Before What Would Have Been Barbaro’s Fourth Birthday
Then, Finally, the Twin Spires
Looking at Barbaro’s Full Brother
Barbaro’s Birth Stall, Empty
Body by Da Vinci
In the End, Barbaro Eclipsed All the Others
To Hold On
From the Author