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Black Barn

By Molly Brodak
Poetry•Vol. XXIV No. 2 (Summer 2011)

We bought a colt and named him Regret.
At night I played his name like a chime in my chest,
I felt he could stamp sharper if I tried harder,
so I fed him everything. He watched my face
while he ate. Ice destroyed groves and groves.
And grief feels fake after a while, the most private
depth: how barely I could see anything at all!
I felt splinters for fingers. I felt his tall thigh.
Broke an arrow across his neck, sold his tail
for green gloves, bit his spine and he lost his voice:
just gaped and strained into fog like a well,
and I wrung in his smell, kissed his eyes, hummed.
Regret is our best horse. I thought wrong.
And I am somewhat wicked. But in love.

Molly Brodak is from Michigan and currently lives in Augusta, Georgia. She is the author of the chapbook Instructions for a Painting and the book A Little Middle of the Night.

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