Thrush Poetry Journal
  • ARCHIVES
  • SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Sally Rosen Kindred

And Ryegrass, and Wind

When we drove by the field where the horse 
always stood, the chestnut 
named Loretta, you’d swing 
your hand to the glass, say Horse, 
you’d spin your hand in the air to ghost
the mall carousel, I’d say
But those horses 
aren’t real
, you’d say
Nay, and one day
the field had no horse in it.
One day the air was a hole 
all the nutbrown real 
had fallen through. That day 
you splayed your hand on the glass 
and said Horse the way 
you’d say Milk, and there 
was only thistle and a lip of light. 
The next day there was a paper 
on the fence, some child’s 
crayon paper of a Horse. 
And you made me drive
to the fence and climb out 
and touch the muddy sheet. 
Or we‘d drive and park 
in front of the raw, unstained grass, 
our windows up, and watch 
the brown crayon lick the wet 
pulp dripping from last night’s 
rain. You’d bring your cup 
of red juice or a book 
in the car. And you are 
two arms 
lifting and spinning, you 
are nosing the glass and I
am your mother, I am the one
who is supposed to save you, my flank, my gambol, my 
mane, who can never save you, my flesh, 
my field, my whinny, my clover hair.




I Tell What Kind of Girl                              

1.

There was a girl, once, sewn into an elm. 
She thought a fox set her there―
couldn’t be sure.
Softened against the stitches, she tamed
their cries by hand,
                          
but this girl wed her bones to desire.
Her longing sang, soured     
through heartwood. And then her hurt
burned her through: broke    
from buds and flooded the fields

in all her white wings.
It must have been good.

2.

There was another girl, trapped in a tooth―
she rose and fell in the wind’s cool mouth.
She was afraid to invent a body
she could leave, so she stayed there
and the wind

held her. In mutual dread
they sang, they circled the meadow.
She believed she needed a fox’s heat
to find her skin, to open a white door                        
and let her down into the grass,                                            

but none could come
inside, where the walls were December smooth 
and cold. It wasn’t like ice.            
It wasn’t like anything you know.                     
Through the white door  

she could hear
the pinched hearts of asphodel―
and then it opened
like mercy, like breath,
when she began to tell.




Sally Rosen Kindred is the author of two full-length poetry books from Mayapple Press, No Eden (2011) and Book of Asters (2014). Her most recent chapbook is Darling Hands, Darling Tongue, nominated for an Elgin Award (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Blackbird, Quarterly West, The Journal, Best New Poets 2009, and on Verse Daily. For more information, see sallyrosenkindred.com




Return to November 2014 Edition