NEW! Poem by Kate Hall

Kate Hall

OVERNIGHT A HORSE APPEARED

I crawled out of a war machine.
You didn’t recognize it as such, but
I did. I held it and fostered it
and fed it strange wooden apples from my purse.

To spend a lifetime waiting inside
a stick horse is to live with confusion
between hollow and hallow. I’ve lived
in this one room my whole life.

It looks a lot like outside. A tiny farrier
by the red barn in the distance. Four horses waiting
to gather us up. We cannot see beyond them.
We colored their coats

to explain the end to ourselves.
The red horse and the pale horse
and the other and there is hunger. A tiny farrier
on the horizon line. Meaning, it’s time

to crawl back inside myself. As the wind,
I’m drawing these patterns in the sand.
Accept the horse as a dangerous gift
you find meaningful. The offering

before the first burning arrow is fired
into the city. It could have been
fireworks or lightning. For my horse and me,
it hardly matters. Though it will matter for you:

how you decide to read me or
whether you do. Overnight, one horse
will gather us. The equine sternum
a drawbridge to a corporeal castle

we are plotting inside. Four horses
released on the unsuspecting city. I am the only one left
inside the warhorse I am holding in my hands.
I will have to live with him, maybe

for him. I am ready
to practice non-participation.
I want this to be the last thing I’ll ever do,
to stop here and say I’ll go no further.