Kimberly Ann Priest
Kimberly Ann Priest is the author of Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress 2021) and the chapbooks Parrot Flower (Glass 2021), Still Life (PANK, 2020) and White Goat Black Sheep (FLP 2018). Her poetry has appeared in several literary journals including Salamander, Slipstream, Borderlands, RiverSedge, and The Berkeley Poetry Review and she is a winner of the 2019 Heartland Poetry Prize in the New Poetry from the Midwest anthology by New American Press. A former book reviewer for NewPages and intern with Sundress Publications, she is currently Assistant Professor of First-Year Writing at Michigan State University, and an associate poetry editor for the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and Embody reader for The Maine Review.
After My Husband Tells Me I Cannot Go Riding Again
Swish of tail, stamp of hoof—the snow
pulled up against the barn for warmth
and the way the gelding nudges the ground
for any brush of grass,
his nose inhaling up,
broad teeth.
I tell you,
he knows I am the imposter
touching his side as though we are friends.
I want to saddle him up,
ride the field,
but this is not mine for the doing;
every animal has its own master.
He stamps
the ground to signal my insolence
roving one broad shoulder with my fingertips,
then twining them into his mane,
tempting power, asking
to be considered raw and wanting—
not chaste, not home again—but out there:
dirt in wind in tongue kicked up.
Like a mirror,
the gelding’s eyes find me, glistening with cold.
In them, I see my husband moving
far across the way,
hanging the saddle he has oiled on its hook.
©2021 West Trade Review
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