Current
Issue
Volume 12.2
Isaac Salazar
2025 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize Winner
—
Stationary Horse
Like any domestic animal, I was once a playful thing.
Nudge of the blue ball Owner gifts me which,
to my mind, is the world. And to feel too big for it
is confusing sometimes. Sitting on the wooden fence is a jury
of crows. Dung piles, like years of neglect disguised as land mines
I must not retrieve. Owner offers their hand the way a tree bears fruit.
Another sky pasted on the sky that is, now, called yesterday.
A photograph, every summer, with a yellow domestic rocket
ship of schoolchildren, never enlists its silences. Behind my canvas back is always
the knife of my grandfather’s, father’s, brother’s, mother’s hand. I am fed
hay & seeds. Sugar cubes mined from the moon. My mouth is a pound
of meat & unsaid language. I try to peer on the inside of myself
& find a world of ghosts dressed up as organs. Who says a body holds
violence inherently? At once I am beast, but also animal. We must recognize
the difference. I like the word guardian when I’m wearing it like armor.
Bio Copy here
