& no one believes the future is horses falling
beneath ten thousand satellites & ten thousand
tombs & who in the new
cities will say through
horses of fire & phosphorous drain
that we could make the journey alone
a temple?
Why lead such horses to your graves,
when the new cities are free
from anticyclone & acid rain,
a place
without derecho & light
pillars igniting
narrow bays—
the future four legs of ice & dust
shrinking
all burned fields
& barren terrain.
Would you then bear yourself strange,
fluke & freak,
without speech &
stranded in frazil
& grease—
would you believe the last great horse is
but a blood wedding of death
& grace?
Rosebud Ben-Oni was a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow. Her most recent collection of poems, turn around, BRXGHT XYXS, was selected as Agape Editions’ Editors’ Choice and will be published in 2019. She is an editorial advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, and Arts & Letters, among other publications.
