To No. 149

Kathryn Jones

September 6, 2026

You look at me with big dark eyes, 

lashes like black fringe, 

yellow tag on a pierced ear indicating

you are someone’s property, 

meat on the hoof, a head of cattle. 

I lost my taste for beef

after raising Texas Longhorns—

no one wanted their rangy, lean meat, 

but you are a Black Angus, 

prized for your marbled muscle.

I watch you across the fence

peacefully grazing in a pasture, 

licking the face of another in an act

of trust, standing with the herd 

under a tree on a hot summer day.

I offer you a cube through the barbed wire.

You come and take it with your thick pink tongue,

big eyes wary. You’re don’t know 

you’re a number now, confined and well fed 

because there’s a bounty on your head.

Kathryn Jones is a poet, journalist, and essayist whose work has been published in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways, and the Texas Observer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including TexasPoetryAssignment.com, Unknotting the Line: The Poetry in Prose (Dos Gatos Press, 2023), Lone Star Poetry (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2023), The Senior Class: 100 Poets on Aging  (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024); and in her chapbook, An Orchid’s Guide to Life (Finishing Line Press, 2024), and the collection The Solace of Wild Places (Lamar University Literary Press, 2025). She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016 and lives on a ranch near Glen Rose, Texas.