From I am the Horse
IN WHICH THE HORSE
peruses community arts offerings. She could paint “Barns.” She could paint “Fields in Spring.” Horse signs up for “Abstraction.” Horse loves the work of Frankenthaler, af Klint, Mehretu, and others. Yet despite her deep feeling she does not actually know how to wield her tools. This, as it turns out, is the story of her life. Horse cannot separate imagination from reality.
IN WHICH THE HORSE
instead of writing, paints the front door. The right color has vibrations. At first it seems Horse has chosen the exact wrong color—evocative of a sports flag—but the more she paints the more the sports-flag feeling falls away. Horse while she paints thinks about a poem her friend has written. It is so beautiful, she wants it real. It gongs in her. It rouses her from her slumbering ways. What Horse’s friend has written sets the vibrations right in Horse. “I don’t need things to be real to be true,” writes Horse. But Horse isn’t writing. She is painting a door.
IN WHICH THE HORSE
emerges like a ground bee or prairie dog from a hole in the earth. She’s a foal, blinking and shaking the soil from her mane. She’s newborn, birthed from a womb of dirt. How is Horse to know this is not how it usually goes. Horse takes a few wobbly steps, then, with the other creatures she finds herself surrounded by, breaks into a run. They prance and kick around the perimeter of the fence, then line up facing the wall of a shed, tails twitching. Okay ladies, now let’s get in formation! laughs the “person” “pitchforking” “hay.” For it will be long years before Horse is able to put language to experience.
IN WHICH THE HORSE
—begat by Classic Empire, who begat Empiralicious, who begat Empire Maker, who demonstrated his special status at every opportunity, and who also begat Empire Everlasting (but was of no relation to Empire Emporium), Empire of the free shoulder, Empire of the huge grundschwung, Empire of the winner’s sash, who stands for no man, Empire of the most desirable offspring, practically like no other stallion Empire, Empire of the best possible development of impulsion, Empire of international potential—logs out of ancestry.com.
IN WHICH THE HORSE
utters a little nicker. For a rock, or a plum, she cannot help herself—she has eyes, nerve endings—she nickers at the commons, at water, just everywhere, at the sun coming up. Horse is walking the circumference of the crown of each of 374 trees. If it matters, they are chestnut, Chinese. It is boring, in a meditative way. She sprinkles urea and sings its name. The vowels innately operatic. Poor Horse, she thinks like an animal.
IN WHICH THE HORSE
nickers and kicks. She “knicks.” Horse is Nix, and you are you. Now you are not you, but everyone, stuck on the back of a horse, galloping toward the cliff’s edge. Perhaps you are already falling toward the stormy sea below. You cannot release her mane. You cannot give her enough blood. This is how you will explain what it was like to live saddled to Empire.