Paint Horse

I am the paint horse--
I have high-stepped through a thousand snakes,
mouths open like poisoned prairie flowers;

I have left their heads beneath my hooves,
a row of flat, dull silver dollars
staring at the endless open sky without seeing it.

You have called me,
whether you knew it or not.
You, beneath your buffalo blanket like the moon behind a cloud,
you have drawn me here.

With a circle around my eye,
and a hand print on my flank,
I feel the bones of all who came before us--
yours,
and mine--
beneath this dirt, these roots, this earth in all directions.

I am calling you,
you, the beautiful one I love.
You have pushed the bone shard through the flesh of your slender arm,
and not flinched.
Surely, every ghost will honor this.

I am the paint horse,
waiting;
you are the one I love.
We will not need reins, a saddle,
or anything but our bodies
together like cloud and storm,
across the plains.
________

for Hannaballistic's Transforming Friday challenge at Real Toads. She commands that we write about the prairie and its creatures.

Feng Shui For Single Girls

The window is all there is--
the room could be on fire behind me,
all unknown.

I have books, thick as starlings at sunset--
some have tiny bones made from love poems;
that is what I've been told.

I'm so beautiful, and so stupid.
I give coins to babies, formulae to retardates.
I stay by my window like a moondog,
offering the airy currents my kiss.

I wait for you by the window,
pretty and useless, a song in a language no one can sing.
I am sister to the vase, the ring removed, and the window I love,
because we are all open, and empty, like this.
_______

Love Song From A Plain Woman

I am no beauty.
There is grass more glamorous than me;
There are weeds bolder,
And the simple red-winged blackbird
Is better adorned...

But, I keep your name as close to my heart
As nest is to branch;
I loved you this morning when the sun ran her light across the wild places nobody owns,
And I'll love you the same tonight under a curved moon, as constant and easy as cricket-song.

If I have beauty, it sleeps twined with devotion,
And the way you speak to me, sometimes,
I know that the old vain goddesses in their marble temples
Must grind their teeth and spit
For helpless envy
Of us.
_____

Need

by Fireblossom and Coal Black

I have a need,
And you can't trifle with genuine desire.

Mama say,
Watch y'self...
Keep sweets til moonrise,
And give all snakes the back side of the shovel.

Be judicious.
Say things plain.
Be the same girl, come shine, come rain.

I have a need,
And a mug I love awful;
Can't break it,
Can't let it run dry.

Dontcha see,
My girl is the warm-side round
And the sweet inside it...

She don't even hafta try;
She come by moonlight, bring a fine desire.
_____

art by Karen Davis