April 2: Marge Piercy’s “Seven Horses”

From The Crooked Inheritance, Marge Piercy’s seventeenth collection of poetry, a fresh turn on girls and horses.

Seven Horses

When I was a pencil of a girl
I had seven horses, one
for each day of the week.

Thunder, Lightning, Sun
and Moon, East Wind
North Wind and Red Roses.

Only I could see them,
roan and black, grey,
palomino, dapple, white

and the strange one
the flying red horse
from the Mobil sign.

I rode them to school,
home, to the store.
I rode them down the slopes

of rocky night.  In adolescence
I never mooned over horses.
Later, they were something cops

charged at us in demonstrations.
I’d sooner ride a cow.
No, it was not horseflesh

but power I craved
and speed.  I longed to gallop
out of our tight mortgaged house

furnished with shouts and razors,
out of the smoke of frustrations
burning like old tires.

I wanted to stick out my neck
and gallop at full tilt off
any map I had ever seen.

Learn more about The Crooked Inheritance

Visit the author online and see her reading schedule for the spring at www.margepiercy.com and on Facebook