Monday, March 4
“She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.”
Joy Harjo’s “She had some horses” has become a signature early poem in her increasingly powerful body of work – poetry, memoirs, music. I haven’t posted this poem for a long time. I think it’s time re-post this just as it appeared on November 14, 2013. You may notice that I had not yet begun invoking the principle: “best when read out loud, with pauses.” Still, it works for this early Joy Harjo work too.
Have a blest day.
john sj
Today’s poem
I met Joy Harjo, a Muscogee-Cherokee poet, when she was 16 and I was assigned to teach her in place of her Bureau of Indian Affairs English teacher. I was at The Institute of American Indian Arts for half a year in 1968 teaching remedial reading. Joy was brilliant and deeply insightful. We are still close friends.
john sj
She Had Some Horses
She had some horses.
She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.
She had some horses.
She had horses with long, pointed breasts.
She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.
She had some horses.
She had horses who danced in their mothers’ arms.
She had horses who thought they were the sun and their
bodies shone and burned like stars.
She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
in stalls of their own making.
She had some horses.
She had horses who liked creek Stomp Dance songs.
She had horses who cried in their beer.
She had horses who spit at male queens who made
them afraid of themselves.
She had horses who said they weren’t afraid.
She had horses who lied.
She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped
bare of their tongues.
She had some horses.
She had horses who called themselves, “horse”.
She had horses who called themselves “spirit”; and kept
their voices secret and to themselves.
She had horses who had no names.
She had horses who had books of names.
She had some horses.
She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who
carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
She had horses who waited for destruction.
She had horses who waited for resurrection.
She had some horses.
She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.
She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her
bed at night and prayed as they raped her.
She had some horses.
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
