Outside the Horse — Blackbird Archive

← v4n1, Spring 2005

In saying tomato field one

inherits a green ironwork of stems,

shifting splotches of sun

where light bounds from skin—

far removed from saying, say,

landmine: crescent steel, a bed

of red, spent leaves, feather-

width pin upright as a statue—

saying statue one troubles

over a park, pin: medal,

but saying horse a meadow

comes forth, bees quickening

and the thought of nostrils

oscillating eager circles,

hooves still among leaf-spines—

saying horse again, one intuits

a rider, architect of motion,

saying motion the brain is seen,

pulsing along its limits.

language war nature

F. Daniel Rzicznek

F. Daniel Rzicznek is the author of two poetry collections, Divination Machine (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2009) and Neck of the World (Utah State University Press, 2007), as well as two chapbooks, Vine River Hermitage (Cooper Dillon Books, 2011) and Cloud Tablets (Kent State University Press, 2006). His poetry has appeared in Boston Review , The New Republic , Orion , Mississippi Review , Hotel Amerika , and Shenandoah . Rzicznek teaches writing at Bowling Green State University and is coeditor (with Gary L. McDowell) of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). Photo by F. Daniel Rzicznek