Reading: Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse by Lucie Brock-Broido

Lucie Brock-Broido (1956-2018) was an American poet who said that a poem is a ’thing that wounds’. Her poetry looks and sounds original, but she was influenced by Emily Dickinson and Wallace Stevens.

Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse
And to the curious I say, Don’t be naïve.

The soul, like a trinket, is a she.

I lay down in the tweed of one man that first frost night.

I did not like the wool of  him.

You have one mitochondrial speck of evidence on your cleat.

They can take you down for that.

Did I forget to mention that when you’re dead

You’re dead a long time.

My uncle, dying, told me this when asked,

Why stay here for such suffering.

A chimney swift flits through the fumatorium.

I long for one last Blue democracy,

Which has broke my heart a while.

How many minutes have I left, the lover asked,

To still be beautiful?

I took his blond face in my hands and kissed him blondly

________________________________On his mouth.

In the end, there seems to be understanding (blond and blond) and the pains of the world will be forgiven. The lover is addressed in the third person singular. What is the Blue democracy? Cool, rational majority decisions that signal how little importance the individuals have? Is it the grand scheme of things, organized in a beautiful way, but not for us? And what does it have to do with the man in his tweed jacket with dna evidence on his cleat? And how does that relate to the trinket-like femininity of the soul?

I have no idea. It could be anything. Maybe the man/lover is the fallow-colored horse and he is dying when the poet kisses him blondly. Maybe she is just currying a horse and daydreaming about her dying uncle, and that she wants to stay around a little bit more to experience the ‘blue democracy’ and bury a lover in a blond embrace?