Two Lyrics from “Rondo”

The boys pawing the ground are horses.
They will drag you between them.
Come, give them your arms!

They will push you where you don’t want to go,
the horses will. They will slide you there
and run away, whinnying.

You are so like a horse!
Toss your head again.
No one will harsh your soft mouth with a bit.
No one will ride you
if you keep that up.

*

Escape artist,
magician of morph:

The only way out will be through it.

Flung ashatter, each dashed edge sharpened—
hammered in, deformed, wrenched open—
scorched, blasted,
pelted—
it can’t be got around.
It does not fall from the sky:

you lift up to it to be wrecked.

Will it kill me?

Yes.
Your dead self remains inside you
from that day on.

-Janet Holmes

If you like what the Rumpus is doing for National Poetry Month, you’ll probably like this multimedia anthology of original poems we’ve run at The Rumpus over the last three years. Available only for iPad. Check it out!

Related Posts:

• National Poetry Month Day 34: “Newborn” by Deborah Ager
• National Poetry Month Day 33: “______________________ studio practice with italicized Michael Ondaatje quote” by Khadijah Queen
• National Poetry Month Day 32: “Some Philosophies of Orbit” by Wesley Rothman
• National Poetry Month Day 31: “loose strife” by Quan Barry
• National Poetry Month Day 30: “The Museum of Flight” by Kazim Ali