Zero by MILTON KESSLER
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The Ch-ing Emperor’s troupe of buried horses
The visor-blinded horses of the jousts
The pompadoured bronze horses of the Renaissance
The Elgin horses roped and dragged from Athens
The Generalissimo’s mount in Freedom Square
The noble cheval burst by English archers
The cannon deaf cavalry of Bull Run
The Imam’s arabians writhing on the the cross of Allah
The dive-bombed horse with tongue of broken glass
Seigfried’s horror horse with Panzer lancer
Horses were never interested in war
War no longer interested in horses
The investment stallions seeding twitched mares
The ground horse catfood of the dispossessed
The cast horses in the mafia stables
The shiver brained coursers wearing buttercups
The cossack horses higher than whole villages
The porcelain dancers of the Lippizaner
The Indian ponies trained to die like savages
The slipping horsefeet of Alexander Nevsky
The heart-horned horses of the picadores
The cigarette horses branded sex and death
The pinup stallions of gold college girls
The cowboy’s true horse on the lonely range
The dawn is the head of a sacrificed horse
From “The Grand Concourse,” (MSS, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, N.Y. 13902: $7.95, paper; 0-928621-02-5). Kessler was born in Brooklyn, grew up in the Bronx and teaches at the State University of New York.
copyright 1990, Milton Kessler. Reprinted by permission of MSS, State University of New York at Binghamton.
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