{"id":2939,"date":"2019-03-04T00:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T05:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/mission-and-identity\/?p=2939"},"modified":"2019-09-18T16:44:55","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T20:44:55","slug":"march-4-joy-harjo-she-had-some-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/2019\/03\/04\/march-4-joy-harjo-she-had-some-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"March 4 – Joy Harjo – – “she had some horses”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 4<\/strong>
\n\u201cShe had some horses she loved.
\nShe had some horses she hated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joy Harjo\u2019s \u201cShe had some horses\u201d has become a signature early poem in her increasingly powerful body of work \u2013 poetry,\u00a0memoirs, music. \u00a0 I haven\u2019t posted this poem for a long time. \u00a0I think it\u2019s time re-post this just as it appeared on November 14, 2013. \u00a0You may notice that I had not yet begun invoking the principle: \u00a0\u201cbest when read out loud, with pauses.\u201d \u00a0 Still, it works for this early Joy Harjo work too.<\/p>\n

Have a blest day.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s poem<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

john sj<\/p>\n

She Had Some Horses<\/strong><\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who were bodies of sand.
\nShe had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
\nShe had horses who were skins of ocean water.
\nShe had horses who were the blue air of sky.
\nShe had horses who were fur and teeth.
\nShe had horses who were clay and would break.
\nShe had horses who were splintered red cliff.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses with long, pointed breasts.
\nShe had horses with full, brown thighs.
\nShe had horses who laughed too much.
\nShe had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
\nShe had horses who licked razor blades.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who danced in their mothers\u2019 arms.
\nShe had horses who thought they were the sun and their
\nbodies shone and burned like stars.
\nShe had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.
\nShe had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet
\nin stalls of their own making.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who liked creek Stomp Dance songs.
\nShe had horses who cried in their beer.
\nShe had horses who spit at male queens who made
\nthem afraid of themselves.
\nShe had horses who said they weren\u2019t afraid.
\nShe had horses who lied.
\nShe had horses who told the truth, who were stripped
\nbare of their tongues.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who called themselves, \u201chorse\u201d.
\nShe had horses who called themselves \u201cspirit\u201d; and kept
\ntheir voices secret and to themselves.
\nShe had horses who had no names.
\nShe had horses who had books of names.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.
\nShe had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who
\ncarried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.
\nShe had horses who waited for destruction.
\nShe had horses who waited for resurrection.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.
\nShe had horses who thought their high price had saved them.
\nShe had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her
\nbed at night and prayed as they raped her.<\/p>\n

She had some horses.<\/p>\n

She had some horses she loved.
\nShe had some horses she hated.<\/p>\n

These were the same horses.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Monday, March 4 \u201cShe had some horses she loved. She had some horses she hated.\u201d Joy Harjo\u2019s \u201cShe had some horses\u201d has become a signature early poem in her increasingly powerful body of work \u2013 poetry,\u00a0memoirs, music. \u00a0 I haven\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11641],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2941,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2939\/revisions\/2941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}