Poetry Magazine
Horse Apocalypse
Hrhm Shp, colt-culling,
Is what hoof lore calls it—
The choke-chain sound a roan coined
To describe the things he saw
Before the sniff weevils crept
Up his nostrils and chewed
His eyes at the hue-sweet root.
•
Mother mares scare foals
From folly-trots and foxglove
By telling them fury tales
Of muck stirrup-deep and shells
Shoveling Passchendaele
Onto Passchendaele,
The foal fallen with the boy.
•
One memory, common
To all breeds, spurs night mares
Sparking down the mute streets
Of their sleep, gas-blind
Witnesses scraping Krupp
Guns over the cobblestones,
Winged sparks breeding in the hay.
•
Having watched us box and ditch
Our dead, they thought our dead
Ate termite-runnels
In the black bark of the land
And pulled all horsefolk down
To join whatever dark cavalry
Thundered underground.
•
The burlap gas mask cupped
And strapped to the wet snout
Could be mistaken, when
The gas gong sounded
And the men grew fly-heads,
For a feed sack chock-
Full of red ants.
Source: Poetry (April 2012).
Biography
Amit Majmudar is the author of the poetry collections 0º 0º (2009) and Heaven and Earth (2011), which received the Donald Justice Prize. Majmudar's poems and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Granta, the New York Review of Books, and the Best American Poetry. His first novel, Partitions (2011), received wide acclaim, with featured reviews in the Wall Street Journal and on the National Public Radio program . . .
Poem Categorization
POET’S REGION U.S., Midwestern
Poetic Terms Free Verse
If you disagree with this poem's categorization, make a suggestion.
Poem of the Day: A Pedestrian
Your results will be limited to content that appeared in Poetry magazine.
