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Love and Strange Horses—Intima’

By Nathalie Handal b. 1969 Nathalie Handal

—

One hundred breaths split the air

as I lean

on the only pine tree I find.

It’s early or late, it’s breezy or hot.

The fields are dry. Summer is near.

The horses are everywhere,

strangely galloping a dream,

but I can’t remember

how to call them,

so I stand back, watch them pass.

—

The first time I rode a horse

my body found the music of fire,

crackling the wind. An unbearable pleasure

that also left me with a burn on the side of my leg.

A sign, the horsekeeper told me, of longing.

A need to return—to belong.

After all, departure is like

pushing the weight of our heart

against the village

whose name has kept us awake.

—

Rafael came from somewhere in Eurasia.

I passed my hands through his mane—

saw a history of conquests and battles,

a field of hay, a mount of truth,

heard a silent ring,

his eyes asking me to go with him,

to confess something sacred,

to name something lustful.

Nothing of where he came from,

or who I was, disturbed us.

—

I knew he was different by the way he ran—

without pause,

without grace,

without distraction,

without ease.

He was told how to move in the world

and resented it.

He knew he would never own anything.

—

He came toward me.

It was a quiet afternoon.

I stood unmoving.

And we listened to the untitled music

circling the earth like an anthem

free of its nation.

—

He was unfamiliar to me,

approaching as if he possessed the land.

Every morning he stopped five feet

from the river.

Nathalie Handal, “Love and Strange Horses—Intima’” from Love and Strange Horses. Copyright © 2010 by Nathalie Handal. All rights are controlled by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. Reprinted by permission of University of Pittsburgh Press.

Source: Love and Strange Horses (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010)

Biography

Playwright, translator, and editor Nathalie Handal is of Palestinian heritage. She has lived in Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States. Handal attended Simmons College in Boston as an undergraduate and earned an MFA in poetry from Bennington College, an MPhil in drama and English from the University of London, and a postgraduate certificate in fiction from Humber College in Canada. She is the author of the . . .

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