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ORGANZA HORSE
matthew frank
Imagine everything
that cantaloupe
is a punchline for, berated orange
and seedless and sleepy. I wake you
with the hair dryer again, your dream
about the Duecorn
in the unitard
interrupted by my desire for a scalp-born
feathering. I am the mercury horse,
gallop-worm ruining pale fruit, and supermarket
fish. This is not the first time
I’ve disrupted your dreams.
Somewhere in South Africa, another nun
is pulling a needle from a girl’s
big toe, the only decent veins
she has left.
Before she dies
she will see, like your mother,
the horse running from the silkworms
who weave it, the unbearable pain
of a viscose bridalwear
mane. When our blood
collapses, pedestrians stop and stare.
Make love to one of them before
I wake you—with circular saw
or fingers—reinvent
legends, strip them
of their axes and animal friends,
allow them warmth in winter, a lake
in July. I am the screaming horse.
Get this mane
off of me. Imagine
that we did run away with love
in our hair, our chests, clinging
like some musical plaque to our teeth.
That our families
were healthy enough
to jump over rainbows. That our addictions
tasted like sugar, dissolved so easily
into simple faucet water. That all fruit
was rindless
and therefore
did not require the knife. That we could
yank the bristles from our brushes
and kiss, lawfully, past this dark.
That us was enough
to make the audience
laugh, the world eloping at a trot.
Then, we could scoop out
our middles with a teaspoon
and move on
to eggs.
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LA PETITE ZINE 24 · EMOTIONAL RESCUE
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Matthew Frank is the author of BAROLO (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), WARRANTY IN ZULU (forthcoming from Barrow Street Press), SAGITTARIUS AGITPROP (Black Lawrence Press), and the chapbooks FOUR HOURS TO MPUMALANGA (Pudding House Publications), and AARDVARK (West Town Press). Recent work appears in THE NEW REPUBLIC, FIELD, EPOCH, CRAZYHORSE, INDIANA REVIEW, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, PLEIADES, PRAIRIE SHOONER, AGNI, HOTEL AMERIKA, THE BEST FOOD WRITING 2006, THE BEST TRAVEL WRITING 2008, GASTRONOMICA, and others. He was born and raised in Illinois, and currently teaches English and Creative Writing at Grand Valley State University. |
