Ricky Ray, from Fealty (Eyewear Publishing Ltd, 2018)
The Seven Hundred Sights in a Horse
A wild horse ran through town. It was always running. Gospel was: something had to be wrong with you to see it. Everyone had seen it. Those who said they hadn’t kept looking over their shoulders. Some saw only an eye, usually when they were blind to the bad side of a relationship. Some saw its mane, a mangy sight, while they went bald or took the bus home from chemo. Its tongue meant you should spit the liquor back into the bottle. The local bum saw its skeleton as he burned from the hollows of his eyes. He took up the guitar again and strummed until every bone disappeared. Its tail told secrets. Those who heard the swish knew what it meant but could never put it into words. They said it was like a higher form of balance. A little girl put out half an apple every evening. The neighbor’s dog ate it and she took it as a sign that she and the horse were friends. Her mother died young and she’s the only one who ever saw the horse’s heart. (Or the only one who confessed.) She married the man she suspected had seen it too. He kissed her when she asked. She and the guitarist became the resident horse interpreters. They often disagreed: on its name, its sex, what color it was, why it had come to town, whether it whinnied when the church bells rang, what a person ought to do with what they saw. Two things they always agreed on: you only rode it out of town, and by out of town they meant out of life, and if you saw its hoof, you better duck.
