Horse Girls

So you’re a horse girl, he says,
smiles as though we are somehow afflicted,
somehow convergent with dark rutted fantasy.
Yes, we are the ones who dream
in pale sparrow grass,
who tick our tongues at the sunfisher,
climb on, barely breathing,
knowing fear could fill a field,
snap a spine like tinder.
We ride bareback
to watch the boys squirm
at the insistence in their minds:
we will always find something to hold on to.

Belly muscles quiver beneath our legs
while the struts of rib cage,
large enough to envelop the sky-licked lake
carry us through backwater country,
out to where we no longer hear the highway,
no longer fear a moment with a gelding,
a hatchback, car horn,
something even the horse girls can’t anticipate.

There is memory through tiger lily switchbacks,
a tongue-twist around a bit,
a muzzle soft as deer moss, old denim,
snuffling over a palm, searching
horse girls who smell
of sunburn and barnyard dogs.
No longer child-women,
but extensions of broomtails,
of Sable Island serenity
in love with no one
as we crawl easily over,
urge the gate open with a tanned foot,
gone while the light still holds above.

—Tammy Armstrong