Before horses, I played with words. Somewhere along the way I started offering up all my words to the horses like finger carrots that they've nibbled down to nubs. So in the coming weeks, here and in my private groups, I'll be stretching my digits a bit and remembering myself back into the words for their own sake.
I’m a product of academic creative writing, workshops, and MFA’s. My young writing won prizes judged by the likes of Nikki Giovanni and Nicholas Delbanco. I was a Young Art finalist in poetry and had a graduate school spot waiting for me when I was sixteen. I PAID my way through college with poetry. Who does that?
I was taught as a young writer that certain topics like love or hope were debasing and trite. The part of me that found an outlet in poetry — the way the wave-crash of too much can be condensed into a line — was quashed by rules and cold seats. So I ran away to horse farms and dusty corners where I could calm my inner critic and warm up in their nostril-breath.
All the work is the same work but certain environments are more inviting. I’m excited to see what my young poet has accomplished in my time away from her. I come here with no urgency, no expectation, and no timeline to create.
Most of my latest work until now has been available on Medium, but it’s time to move house.
Anarchy
I’m half joiner, half seeker.
I balance acceptance with revolution.
I push buttons while I keep the peace.
My curiosity is a crashing wave that recedes quietly so the evidence of its presence doesn’t change the landscape.
Outside has always felt better than inside but I like to decorate rooms.
I enact my revolution in moments, coffee spoons of anarchy. I let my horses manes grow out. I park my truck tires too close to the curb. I leave the hair from my brush at the edge of the forest so a bird might make a house. I leave my plates unwashed in the sink.
And in stillness when the madness moon streams through the uncovered windows, I wake up ravenous and creak to the kitchen for a snack.
I break the rules in stolen seconds, a finger-plugged dam of mixed metaphors that keep the waters back.
I blame whoever made the rules, but I’m cozy with the accountability of the seasons, the way some leaves stick to the branches in winter like they’re reluctant to give up.
It’s a sand paper smoothing, an elemental balancing of fear and insurgence, this noiseless mutiny of bliss.