Horse in the Dark
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Horse in the Dark
Brown as a mule, I stomped through the flocking geese who thought themselves swans –
but a mule knows its opposite and so did I. They were no swans. A horse can be broken by such
beauty. A horse may follow it down a slope that will slice its hooves. Beauty, like a restless man in a tall hat,
a wandering boy with teeth white as if he had never known meat, the score of water over stones –
I leapt up for the rain-cloud shaped like a darker horse, jumped a too-tall fence believing
a horse could be loved more and ridden less, until we fell apart, the horse I was and I.
We who had prayed for a heaven of toothless grass and barley. How did we untwine? When
did my long face pull itself back into this form? How did words replace neigh? [End Page 111]
Two legs took my trot. And I, freed of my horse-self who lay dead to the world,
ran through the clover. On two legs ran and ran… [End Page 112]
Vievee Francis, a native of Texas, is author of Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University Press, 2008), her first collection of poems. Her poems have also appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Margie, Detroit’s Metro Times, Callaloo, and other periodicals. She lives in Detroit, Michigan.
