The Appaloosa

By Afaa Michael Weaver b. 1951 Afaa Michael Weaver

The one horse you gave me

you took back when she went insane,

when she began to chew wood

instead of the expensive grain

we bought from the feed store,

the grain that had the sweet smell

of molasses and was good for even

us to chew. She turned into

an ugly thing with her wild thoughts,

and I forgot about the beauty

expected of her when her blanket

filled out and complemented

her chestnut body and the name

the Nez Percé gave her. She rotted

and began to stink of promises

gone wrong, of gods avenging

their defilement. A man who knew

what to do with useless horses

came and took her away in

a wooden trailer she tried to chew,

and my tears welled up in huge drops

before they splattered on the ground,

as I trembled and realized I would have

to give up her own ghost for her,

ghost which she did not have, ghost

which she came here beautifully without.

Afaa Michael Weaver, “The Appaloosa” from My Father’s Geography. Copyright © 1992. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, www.pitt.edu/~press/. Used by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: My Father’s Geography (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992)

Biography

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, Afaa Michael Weaver was born Michael S. Weaver to working class parents in 1951. His poetry echoes the gospel and blues ethos of his mother and father, who were themselves the children of farmers in southernmost Virginia. His father grew up as a sharecropper. The eldest of five children, Weaver graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic high school and entered the University of Maryland in College Park . . .

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