“Currying the Fallow-Colored Horse”

by Lucie Brock-Broido

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.

— Poetry, March 2013

Lucie Brock-Broido was born in Pittsburgh, was educated at Johns Hopkins and Columbia universities, and has taught at Bennington, Princeton, Harvard (where she was a Briggs-Copeland poet), and Columbia. She is the recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as awards from the American Poetry Review and the Academy of American Arts and Letters.