Thrush Poetry Journal
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Letitia Trent

The Bus Stop Boys

I’m not interested in horses,
                                                 But at the fence along the edge
            of our bus-stop street the horses came in twos, hooves
kicking pits in the apple softened sod. In spring,
              The smell of their skin hung thick
as their sheen, and in autumn a hard litter of apples fell to kick
             or lift to their rubbery lips, their teeth like history-book
pictures of Washington’s famed wooden dentures.

They scared me.  I only liked them from a distance. I'm really trying
            to get to the whick whick of the bus stop boys’ corduroys
                        when they ran away after teasing me
            or the horses. I cannot see them, but I can see the horses, one butting
the other’s long, muscular throat with his skull.      

But let’s say we’re all there: me, the bus stop boys, and the horses. Once,
                        a horse pulled back his freckled lips and filched the flower
           from my barrette, sending me screaming into the empty street.
The horses chewed it to wire and petals. I couldn’t come closer to catch it,
          couldn’t keep my knees together. But they

surprised me―the boys, with their math-clean minds, their bike wrecks
           and punched guts―they wanted to teach
                        the fear from me. Look, they said,
                                    voices taking a soothing, end of-sentence-inflection, it’s simple.

They won’t touch you if you’re careful. And the horses, lips brushing
            the boy’s hands, only dampness where the breath
had been, took the apples whole
                          into their mouths and crushed them. 




Letitia Trent's first novel, Echo Lake, is available from Dark House Press. Trent's work has appeared in the Denver Quarterly, The Black Warrior Review, Fence, Folio, The Journal, Mipoesias, Ootoliths, Blazevox, and many others. Her first full-length poetry collection, One Perfect Bird, is available from Sundress Publications. Her chapbooks include You aren't in this movie (dancing girl press), Splice (Blue Hour Press) and The Medical Diaries (Scantily Clad Press). She was the 2010 winner of the Alumni Flash Writing Award from the Ohio State University's the Journal and has been awarded fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center and the MacDowell Colony.




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