A horse who lives in a city, over in the hell part of Hell’s
Kitchen, in a big metal tent.
You have to get one who is dying.
Maybe you get his last day on the job, his owner, his
tourists.
You get his walk back home at the end of the day,
some flies, some drool. You get his deathbed, maybe.
And then, post mortem, still warm, you get the vet or else
the butcher
to take his three best legs. And then you get the taxidermist
to stuff them
heavy, with some alloy, steel, something.
Next day you go over to Christie’s interiors sale and buy a
baby-grand piano,
shabby condition but tony provenance, let’s say it graced the
entry hall
of some or other Vanderbilt’s Gold Coast classic six.
And you ask the welder you know to carefully replace the
piano legs
with the horse legs, and you put the horse/piano somewhere
like a lobby,
and you hire a guy to play it on the hour, so that everybody
will know
how much work it is to hold anything up in this world.
This is always the start of something good.
Literal Pain in the Literary Ass
Any other runners ever get a butt cramp? Last two runs at mile 2, center of my right butt muscle cramps up and though I try to walk it off, it never goes away entirely while I’m running. No back pain, and I’m stretching it, but any other ideas?
Because it sucks.
My talented and crafty jeweler friend, Stephanie, sent me an amazing necklace!
(Of course, I’m realizing I didn’t have it all straight before i started snapping but… I lovelovelove it. Many thanks!)
…how I love you the same way I learned how to ride a bike:
Scared.
But reckless.
- Rudy Francisco
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
- Anne Sexton, from Wanting to Die
Notes On Your Windshield
Woke up with the beast. All day, the same inconsolable blade nicking my heart. Add Etta James if you want. Add a warm winter. Add a to-do list like Everest. An empire falling to ruin. My kingdom for a moment of joyful reverence, of simple amusement, of adoration. I’ve stayed quiet and alone in this house all day. I turned you over and over in my mouth. I’ve resisted whiskey and chocolate - but not cheese. The grove is abloom in our late afternoon sun somewhere. The oars are rocking in the hull of the boat. These hours I’ve stayed the hollowing. Now, I’ve no task that will keep me from it. I’ve kept this space cleared, sleepwalker, for you.
But the oranges are begging to be eaten.
Horse Piano
The idea is to get a horse, a Central Park workhorse.
- Anna MacDonald
(via lastknownsunset)
Carlee Fernandez
Bear Arm, Head, and Leg Study I
C-Print
2004
GPOY Every Day Edition.
The Icelandic Language
In this language, no industrial revolution;
no pasteurized milk; no oxygen, no telephone;
only sheep, fish, horses, water falling.
The middle class can hardly speak it.
In this language, no flush toilet; you stumble
through dark and rain with a handful of rags.
The door groans; the old smell comes
up from under the earth to meet you.
But this language believes in ghosts;
chairs rock by themselves under the lamp; horses
neigh inside an empty gully, nothing
at the bottom but moonlight and black rocks.
The woman with marble hands whispers
this language to you in your sleep; faces
come to the window and sing rhymes; old ladies
wind long hair, hum, tat, fold jam inside pancakes.
In this language, you can’t chit-chat
holding a highball in your hand, can’t
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last.
Old inflections move from case to case,
gender to gender, softening consonants, darkening
vowels, till they sound like the sea moving
icebergs back and forth in its mouth.
- Bill Holm
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