Thrush Poetry Journal
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Brandon Rushton
​

Equine Elegy

Figure it’s November. Twenty two miles outside Indiana
            and the heat cuts out. There is a sign to be cautious 

of the crosswinds. The highway forces travelers to pass
            policemen probing a car in a ravine. Supermarket,

Dairy Queen, cemetery—bury your horses. At a service 
            station, the young boy with the family in the station wagon

grows frustrated with these forced close quarters and with 
            a sharpie writes sex across the stall in the men’s room.

Strip mall, cinema, cemetery—bury your horses. For the next hour
            all he can think about is the things he could do

to the condom he bought like a gumball in the bathroom. 
            Cornfield, pasture, pasture, schoolhouse, pasture,

cemetery—bury your horses. On the other side of Indiana, 
            figure it’s the driveway. Take a headcount of the herd

and like all things picking up steam wish them well as they gallop west 
            surely to end up at the bottom of the coastal cliffs of America.




Equine Elegy 

A young man puts on the knee-high boots of a young woman’s 
            father to help her water and hay the horses.

Dead of winter. The barn. The barn’s three pull-string bulbs. 
            Their naked bodies find cadence in the hum

of the power-lines and evening. It will still be an hour 
            before her parents are home. 

A young woman sitting on the fence tells a young man 
            if they play their cards right they might have

a full house. Both of them are now unintentionally 
            uncomfortable. She only meant a hand to bet on.

When the young man and young woman feel old 
            enough to have regrets, they do. They push their car

off a cliff and swim as far off the coast as they can. 
            In hindsight, the hind legs were the most important

part of the story nobody at the barn party 
            would get behind.




Equine Elegy 

There is no headcount. There is no herd. There is no young 
            woman or young man haunting any hay barn

in any state from here to the coastal cliffs. There has been 
            a lawnmower idling for weeks on the edge 

of a meadow. There is a can of spray paint at the bottom 
            of a ladder-less water tower. There is a ladder

leaning on the supermarket’s awning. Only wind hangs 
            from its rungs. Elementary swings sigh.      

The tires of the car under the tarp rot dry. The horse is in the barn. 
            If she actually had eyes in the back of her head

she would have been able to see everything creeping up 
            behind her. The horse in the barn is bones.

It is again what it was then. No one, now, left to worry 
            whether to bridle or to bury.




Brandon Rushton’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Journal, CutBank, Passages North, and others. He holds an MFA from the University of South Carolina where he served as the editor of the literary journal Yemassee, and continues to teach writing. Born and raised in Michigan, he now lives (with Mara and Juan) and writes in Charleston, South Carolina.




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