The Blackness of Horse, or Horse as Machine

by Danielle Miette Brown

in Plato, the season is irrelevant. the horse is indomitable,
riotous calenture which kicks and leaps and cannot be
contained. winters come and go. the snow does not settle on the back
of this horse, for thou (not it) is rising into a frenzy-into a momentous ah-ha
which clicks its heels, chomps at the bit-(all those
well-known anthropomorphisms by which the horse is followed, by which cause
is conferred that the horse be followed

into the desert). what no one had planned, however, is the hunt
of the horse, the moment when the horse is cornered and will not fit
into the trailer which has been brought.
a harness, then, is just as good and possibly also
a bridle. and this is how the horse is put to work.

in spring, the heat brings things into their element, out of the stall
and into an affirmation of being. the horse? it is still winter inside the horse.

when riding a mare, it is easy to mistake the place where you sit
as the axis mundi, to survey the land which has gone
before and the land that will come after and say see, look,
what I have done has no equal and will not be
again. but the servant at your side who rides his donkey-
he is the axis mundi. and you, when you
dismount, are the axis mundi, and when you ride, and when you sit down
to dinner, and when you bow your head to bless and open your plastic
pouch… the corposant is upheld
when you sneeze, is far from you, it seems, and yet the seasons can be touched
in the contact of plow with earth, your hand with your other.

and meanwhile, the horse is given to spasms and fits,
fits of rage. it is the very darkness which pounds its head again
and again against the stall all day and all
night which disturbs rotation, you think.
and you ready yourself to destroy the horse-it is sick,
you tell your friends and neighbors, your children
who believe you.
the hunt was never over, you say to the horse, and the horse
has gone from you. it is in the eyes. the synopsis
of the eyes. a history which neighs and kicks, over
and over, turning from you, turning from the one who has the power to free
and the power to crucify. you fire your gun, and calmly walk back out into the night
which does not end; the night which flows in rivulets
and has woken everyone within the house.

-- DMB
©2001 Danielle Miette Brown

Danielle Miette Brown was born in Arlington, Texas in 1973. At the age of eight, she began writing short stories in a backyard tool shed and, by age 12, had completed two collections of short stories as well as several novels and screenplays. Danielle graduated from Baylor University in Waco shortly after the Branch Davidian crisis for which that area is notorious. In June of 1999, Danielle took up residence in Austin, Texas where she recently completed work on her fourth collection of poems, a book dealing with the nature of consciousness and the mysteries of the unconscious processes manifesting themselves through instinct. Danielle is currently working as a college professor and psychologist.