Twenty-nine Horses at least I am no matador / his rider doubles down and clings to nylon reins / thinking this / nirvana doesn’t subdue / while Formal Dude and Saturday feel the ground hollow beneath their heels / thighs furrow on either flank / he imagines Black cowboys and frog skeletons dismembered in the mud / where his daddy first taught him to trim hooves / dispel the memory / before this he pushed cattle through fences / gave soil and life to the breeder’s home / here is an unclear / a herd of grievances mounting his amygdala in burlap twine / when he searches for a reason he finds demons who preexisted before the Great Flood / given any good year a child would paint its body dry with a good brush made from good hair / aching in mild antiquity it resolves the aging thing / bless its heart / and specks of wool would grow like blemished pillows on its copper side / instead / rain hits the dirt track / coagulating in a hole beneath their hooves / mice in muckshells / sinking / etching lullabies and goodbyes on grains of sand already moistened by fear / already bathing in their crests / making sienna.
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Cymelle Leah Edwards is an MFA Candidate at Northern Arizona University. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Elm Leaves Journal, WKTLO, and Nightingale and Sparrow. She currently works as a freelance research assistant in the Special Collections department at Cline Library.