With Her
by Natalie Eilbert
I want to write a poem about horses, too.
I have already written poems that feature
horses. Sometimes prominently.
I want to write a poem about horses
in tercets, so I am writing a poem
about horses in tercets. I tell my students
it is important to engage the grammar
of each line of poetry by jarring expectation
about what the line can do, its dimensional
limits. In this case, grammar is a gunky blood,
gels to whatever electable unit of time. I walk
straight up to a horse. Its nostrils blare the weather
of stones. My poem about horses should be a poem
about failure, too. Like most nouns, I love horses
from a theoretical distance. Up close, they terrify me.
My thoughts turn fleshy. My friend’s horse ripped
her hair from her scalp as a girl, thinking it hay.
Like a wheel crushing a foot, who could blame
the horse for having no depth of metaphor,
only an automatic sense of knowing what it wants.
My friend wore her bald spot all over her face.
The horse was shot in the same corral by a father
years later. She was mendacious, unruly. So far,
I don’t enjoy the tone of my horse poem.
This morning on my run, I followed tree roots
along the sidewalk cracks. Such raised lines
wanted to teach me about circumstantial damage:
A horse bends over to feed, chomps down on
yellow, tastes mint shampoo, if it tastes at all.
A root lifts the sidewalk like a tuft pulled up
from the skull. Either way, something collapses
as the highway spells nearby distance. A great cross
is mounted over a mound. The surface eases.
I have already written poems that feature
horses. Sometimes prominently.
I want to write a poem about horses
in tercets, so I am writing a poem
about horses in tercets. I tell my students
it is important to engage the grammar
of each line of poetry by jarring expectation
about what the line can do, its dimensional
limits. In this case, grammar is a gunky blood,
gels to whatever electable unit of time. I walk
straight up to a horse. Its nostrils blare the weather
of stones. My poem about horses should be a poem
about failure, too. Like most nouns, I love horses
from a theoretical distance. Up close, they terrify me.
My thoughts turn fleshy. My friend’s horse ripped
her hair from her scalp as a girl, thinking it hay.
Like a wheel crushing a foot, who could blame
the horse for having no depth of metaphor,
only an automatic sense of knowing what it wants.
My friend wore her bald spot all over her face.
The horse was shot in the same corral by a father
years later. She was mendacious, unruly. So far,
I don’t enjoy the tone of my horse poem.
This morning on my run, I followed tree roots
along the sidewalk cracks. Such raised lines
wanted to teach me about circumstantial damage:
A horse bends over to feed, chomps down on
yellow, tastes mint shampoo, if it tastes at all.
A root lifts the sidewalk like a tuft pulled up
from the skull. Either way, something collapses
as the highway spells nearby distance. A great cross
is mounted over a mound. The surface eases.
Natalie Eilbert is the author of Indictus, winner of Noemi Press's 2016 Poetry Contest, slated for publication in late 2017, as well as the debut poetry collection, Swan Feast (Bloof Books, 2015). She is the recipient of the 2016 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellowship at University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she is serving a one-year academic appointment. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of The Atlas Review.