HORSE STORIES

The sun is a headache
I take with me from place
To place, a duck’s

Yammering green skull
Beaded with lake, I wonder
Who turned on

All the birds today? A young Slovenian
Woman reads Kant between bites
Of ice cream sandwich as Kindergarten

Children impersonate a chain
Gang staggering astride
Their flimsy string, no one is sleeping

In the thicket for once, no
Suffering lady stuck
Interrogating the strangeness

Of air, a pinstriped man resolutely
Wades circles through
The cluttered water of the

Fountain, his leather
Shoes shuffling amongst
Abandoned coins

So it is of
Myself I must
Trust this

Massless core, the good
With which it binds
Me to the world and would

That all were possessed
Of such meddlesome
Middle, center, the sentries

Of self crowding out the sting
Of what relative
Ethics inextricably arrive

There, a soul is not
A gauge, no
Thing receding, expanding

So it is if
I crush two mine
Does not treble

Nor divide into thirds, her ice
Cream now melting down
The stick onto her fingers, pasting

The book’s pages, my knees
Thoughtlessly knocking, a pigeon
Narrowly misses the ear

Of a small girl, her mother
Screaming in terror, everybody
Turning terrified and when

Later the man on
The subway train states
'My name

Is Sonny Pain' I know
Exactly what he
Means, names being

Our small admissions of guilt.