cover design: Young Sun Compton
Marlo Starr is a writer and English PhD student living in Atlanta. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The Threepenny Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Vector Press, The Atlas Review, Berfrois, and elsewhere.
horse breaker
Is there such a thing as an act of God?
Consider the life of the sparrow
how she gathers stray threads,
a slip of cotton in her mouth:
the guarded shell hardens in the fist
but shatters on the rocks.
He called himself a breaker of horses
and we knew it was true
from our lassoed throats.
Our knees studding the cold wet grass
we grew straight-backed and tall
the surprising give of bone
What we learn in the dark
fire consumes all excess and still
never burns clean never leaves whole.
When I try to sever the tug of the leash
as far as I go
Enough thunder between us to storm
but not a muscle twitched Eyes rolling wide
dry tongues lapping water God is real
he lives round my neck
Consider the sparrow a tree arching
one hundred years in the wrong direction
She gathers her home in her mouth
piece by piece her skull soft
against the window the glass
reflecting all that sky.