Horses of Poetry

The horses of
poetry sleep
standing up, in
paddocks of ink

Together, they
run down the long-
shadowed morning,
grazing each word

in the mind’s deep
grass, with soft lips
prehensile as
a monkey’s tail

and the teeth of
a beauty queen, long
straight and white, like
the bones they are.

They toss their manes
proudly, and prance
as though there’s a
mirror, somewhere

So gorgeous, such
Rippling beauty,
the muscular,
enchanted flesh

too much for us
in the end. We
take a picture
and leave. They snort

and whinny, their
bodies’ poised for
flight. The horses
of poetry

gleam in our mind’s
hollow, the wind
of humankind
in their nostrils.

~ Anna Quon

Anna Quon lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. She writes with compassion and ferocity about the struggle to grow up without a tribe of one's own. Drawing on her own experience as a half-Chinese- Canadian raised on Canada''s East Coast, and her own ambivalence about belonging, Migration Songs is Quon''s first novel.

Popular Posts