John Taggart / Horse


Grey or black boxes

Amish or Mennonite buggies on the hard roads with gravel
Shoulders

Matchbox boxes that explode when hit
By drunk fallen asleep taking a curve too fast
Cars the horses getting the worst of it all the horse screams the carnage and messy death of it

And I worry about them

But mostly I worry about one horse the horse in Herzog’s movie

The horse has been pushed off a raft and into tumult/a tumultuous river it is useless to question why the horse was pushed off

The horse has been pushed off flounders in tumult/
A tumultuous river clambers ashore and is last seen standing at the edge of a jungle

Brought to the new world by conquistadors in order to be
Conquistadors
The horse is standing in an outlandish outfit

“all dressed up and nowhere to go”

worries me

can the horse make its way through a jungle and the dangers of a jungle vines and vine-like snakes depressed/depressing monkeys hostile native settlements a jungle and
the dangers of a jungle
phantoms phantasms phantasmagoria also known as chivalry

can the horse make its way

become a horse of the high mountain ridges layers of mist beneath the
ridges

not alone but apart

a horse making its way along the ridges moody wooden flute sounds rising from
the settlements.


CUE:  A Journal of Prose Poetry
Summer 2006 Volume III, Issue 2