She Had Some Horses

I. She Had Some Horses She had some horses. She had horses who were bodies of sand. She had horses who were maps drawn of blood. She had horses who were skins of ocean water. She had horses who were the blue air of sky. She had horses who were fur and teeth. She had horses who were clay and would break. She had horses who were splintered red cliff. She had some horses. She had horses with eyes of trains. She had horses with full, brown thighs. She had horses who laughed too much. She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses. She had horses who licked razor blades. She had some horses. She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms. She had horses who thought they were the sun and their bodies shone and burned like stars. She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon. She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet in stalls of their own making. She had some horses. She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs. She had horses who cried in their beer. She had horses who spit at male queens who made them afraid of themselves. She had horses who said they weren't afraid. She had horses who lied. She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped bare of their tongues. She had some horses. She had horses who called themselves, "horse." She had horses who called themselves, "spirit," and kept their voices secret and to themselves. She had horses who had no names. She had horses who had books of names. She had some horses. She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak. She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts. She had horses who waited for destruction. She had horses who waited for resurrection. She had some horses. She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour. She had horses who thought their high price had saved them. She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her bed at night and prayed. She had some horses. She had some horses she loved. She had some horses she hated. These were the same horses. II. Two Horses I thought the sun breaking through Sangre de Cristo Mountains was enough, and that wild musky scents on my body after long nights of dreaming could unfold me to myself. I thought my dance alone through worlds of odd and eccentric planets that no one else knew would sustain me. I mean I did learn to move after all and how to recognize voices other than the most familiar. But you must have grown out of a thousand years dreaming just like I could never imagine you. You must have broke open from another sky to here, because now I see you as a part of the millions of other universes that I thought could never occur in this breathing. And I know you as myself, traveling. In your eyes alone are many colonies of stars and other circling planet motion. And then your fingers, the sweet smell of hair, and your soft, tight belly. My heart is taken by you and these mornings since I am a horse running towards a cracked sky where there are countless dawns breaking simultaneously. There are two moons on the horizon and for you I have broken loose. III. Drowning Horses She says she is going to kill herself. I am a thousand miles away. Listening. To her voice in an ocean of telephone sound. Grey sky and nearly sundown; I don't ask her how. I am already familiar with the weapons: a restaurant that wouldn't serve her, the thinnest laughter, another drink. And even if I weren't closer to the cliff edge of the talking wire, I would still be another mirror, another running horse. Her escape is my own. I tell her, yes. Yes. We ride out for breath over the distance. Night air approaches, the galloping other-life. No sound. No sound. IV. Ice Horses These are the ones who escape after the last hurt is turned inward; they are the most dangerous ones. These are the hottest ones, but so cold that your tongue sticks to them and is torn apart because it is frozen to the motion of hooves. These are the ones who cut your thighs, whose blood you must have seen on the gloves of the doctor's rubber hands. They are the horses who moaned like oceans, and one of them a young woman screamed aloud; she was the only one. These are the ones who have found you. These are the ones who pranced on your belly. They chased deer out of your womb. These are the ice horses, horses who entered through your head, and then your heart, your beaten heart. These are the ones who loved you. They are the horses who have held you so close that you have become a part of them, an ice horse galloping into fire. V. Explosion The highway near Okemah, Oklahoma exploded They are reasons for everything Maybe             there is a new people, coming forth being born from the center of the earth, like us, but another tribe. Maybe             they will be another color that no one has ever seen before. Then they might be hated, and live in Muskogee on the side of the tracks that Indians live on. (And they will be the ones to save us.) Maybe             there are lizards coming out of rivers of lava from the core of this planet, coming to bring rain to dance for the corn, to set fields of tongues slapping at the dark earth, a kind of a dance. But maybe the explosion was horses, bursting out of the crazy earth near Okemah. They were a violent birth, flew from the ground into trees to wait for evening night mares to come after them: then                 into the dank wet fields of Oklahoma then                 their birth cords tied into the molten heart then                 they travel north and south, east and west then                 into wet while sheets at midnight when everyone sleeps and the baby dreams of swimming in the bottom of the muggy river. then                 into frogs who have come out of the earth to see for rain then                 a Creek woman who dances shaking the seeds in her bones then                 South Dakota, Mexico, Japan, and Manila then                 into Miami to sweep away the knived faces of hatred Some will not see them. But some will see the horses with their hearts of sleeping volcanoes and will be rocked awake past their bodies to see who they have become.