The old mare in full tack has followed me to a desert.
With that dream again. Of rooms peeling, concealed.
An oak-mold odor of basement.
But look, I walk out, leave dust where it’s set.
Let rattlers rest.
One day the dustiest place ever to cleanse
will leave me clean on the mesa.
A cave between two rows of teeth, two caves beneath
a fissured forehead. Boot leather down to parchment.
When I walked out this morning, horses left their shoes
to rust on the road and went naked.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 6.
Raised in Minneapolis, the fourth generation on Positively 4th Street, Deborah Kelly lived many years in Chicago, and is home in Colorado. Her poems are found, four with award recognition, in several journals based in the US, Canada, and Europe. A graduate of Northwestern University, she has led and written widely on behalf of non-profit organizations at work in the US and Mexico, and has served as Secretary of a distinctive, twenty-six-year-old independent literary press.See all items about Deborah Kelly
