Image by Hollis Duncan

Poetry Break Maiden

Kathleen Radigan

Just when I think I am dead,
I see horses in the next yard,
glistening. Their bones crack
like glow sticks. They honk up
ethereal snot, spit pearls into
the pool. The minute I hear them
pounding down the street,
I forgive their stench,
their eagerness to deceive.
I forget how they left,
how they gambled my fortune
to dust. What providence!
The Lord let them return,
velour skin stinking of earth. 

Just when I think I’ve retired,
I see horses stamping dirt clouds
by the woods. They’re neither bad
nor good. I bet the house on every one.

Kathleen Radigan is a writer and cartoonist from Rhode Island whose work has been published in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, McSweeney’s, and Guernica, among other places. She teaches high school English in New York City.

l More from Issue Fourteen