Chera Hammons
When Only Sage is Left
Horses walk in a cone of blindness
that starts just past their foreheads
and goes out straight behind them,
leaving a wake of vanishing light.
When you walk behind them,
they see you disappear
on one side and reappear
suddenly on the other.
In that moment, you are like any other predator
dropping quietly from a tree
or coming up from the parting grass,
baring your teeth.
A kick betrays generations of instinct
that can never be bred out.
The mustangs browsing on the sparse grass
drag their shadows over the ravines,
grown heavy with our stories.
They could survive without us
had we not fenced them off of water,
given their grazing to cattle's many stomachs.
When only sage is left,
it will ball in their bellies like string.
To walk behind a horse, you must tell it
that the ghost in its shadow is you.
You must place your hand on its rump
on one side, and while talking to the horse,
walk to the other, so that it can
accommodate your good intentions.
See? The horse's darkness is really no different
than your darkness.
You walk into a space that shows more of its shape
the farther you move through it.
This bright land will close
behind you as you leave.
Chera Hammons is the Writer-in-Residence at West Texas A&M University. She received her MFA from Goddard College. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Foundry, Rattle, Stoneboat, THRUSH, Tupelo Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Amaranthine Hour received the 2012 Jacar Press Chapbook Award. She has published two full-length books: Recycled Explosions and The Traveler's Guide to Bomb City (winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award). A third is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. She lives in Amarillo, TX, and serves on the editorial board of poetry journal One.
Return to January 2019 Edition
Horses walk in a cone of blindness
that starts just past their foreheads
and goes out straight behind them,
leaving a wake of vanishing light.
When you walk behind them,
they see you disappear
on one side and reappear
suddenly on the other.
In that moment, you are like any other predator
dropping quietly from a tree
or coming up from the parting grass,
baring your teeth.
A kick betrays generations of instinct
that can never be bred out.
The mustangs browsing on the sparse grass
drag their shadows over the ravines,
grown heavy with our stories.
They could survive without us
had we not fenced them off of water,
given their grazing to cattle's many stomachs.
When only sage is left,
it will ball in their bellies like string.
To walk behind a horse, you must tell it
that the ghost in its shadow is you.
You must place your hand on its rump
on one side, and while talking to the horse,
walk to the other, so that it can
accommodate your good intentions.
See? The horse's darkness is really no different
than your darkness.
You walk into a space that shows more of its shape
the farther you move through it.
This bright land will close
behind you as you leave.
Chera Hammons is the Writer-in-Residence at West Texas A&M University. She received her MFA from Goddard College. Her work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Foundry, Rattle, Stoneboat, THRUSH, Tupelo Quarterly, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Amaranthine Hour received the 2012 Jacar Press Chapbook Award. She has published two full-length books: Recycled Explosions and The Traveler's Guide to Bomb City (winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award). A third is forthcoming from Sundress Publications. She lives in Amarillo, TX, and serves on the editorial board of poetry journal One.
Return to January 2019 Edition