Nicole Callihan
Equine Behavior
Ella asks if you have to be lying down to die.
I think you can die then fall, I say.
Or you can be in a seated position.
We ask Siri.
But Siri wants to talk about horses.
She says you should slap the horse.
If you can’t lift the horse on your own, have someone help you lift the horse.
But you must get the horse on its feet. Walk it in circles.
Hock and fetlock.
When I could finally drive, I drove myself to the doctor, circled the block for parking.
The winter was mild. Is mild.
I still have last year’s gloves balled up in the bottom of my bag.
The painful joints, the navicular bone.
Lonely, sleep-deprived horses may be resistant to schooling.
The sky is half very blue, half very grey; my husband coughs in the shower.
If you blow into a horse’s nostrils, it will be dedicated to you for life.
This is true.
Or at least partially true. Like most everything.
Truth being its own sort of saddle.
Nicole Callihan’s poetry books include SuperLoop (2014), and the chapbooks: The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), The Couples (a novella, 2019), and ELSEWHERE ( w/ Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared in Tin House, Sixth Finch, PEN America, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.
Return to May 2021 Edition
Ella asks if you have to be lying down to die.
I think you can die then fall, I say.
Or you can be in a seated position.
We ask Siri.
But Siri wants to talk about horses.
She says you should slap the horse.
If you can’t lift the horse on your own, have someone help you lift the horse.
But you must get the horse on its feet. Walk it in circles.
Hock and fetlock.
When I could finally drive, I drove myself to the doctor, circled the block for parking.
The winter was mild. Is mild.
I still have last year’s gloves balled up in the bottom of my bag.
The painful joints, the navicular bone.
Lonely, sleep-deprived horses may be resistant to schooling.
The sky is half very blue, half very grey; my husband coughs in the shower.
If you blow into a horse’s nostrils, it will be dedicated to you for life.
This is true.
Or at least partially true. Like most everything.
Truth being its own sort of saddle.
Nicole Callihan’s poetry books include SuperLoop (2014), and the chapbooks: The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), The Couples (a novella, 2019), and ELSEWHERE ( w/ Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared in Tin House, Sixth Finch, PEN America, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.
Return to May 2021 Edition