How to Triumph Like a Girl
By Ada Limón
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.
8 Comments
I learned to ride on a stocky old mare at the A Bar A Ranch in New Milford, Connecticut, a very long time ago. I struggle with racehorse imagery because of the exploitativeness and the cruelty of the sport of horse racing, although I can suspend that to enter the world of this poem.
ReplyDeleteHere is my response:
Learning to Ride
I remember my first time on a horse,
My mother watching from outside the ring
As I put my right foot in the stirrup
And hauled myself up,
Swinging my left leg over the animal
And slipping my left foot safely into the stirrup.
She was an old mare well used to children
Who had no idea about horse power.
She carried me around the ring,
Giving me time to move with her easy gait.
My instructor told me to sit tall,
To roll with her moves,
To hold the reins in my right hand,
Rest my left hand on my thigh
But mostly to sit tall.
The horse is not a chair, not a couch.
You are a guest. Let Pegasus fly.
My mother watched
As I learned to trot and to canter,
As I sought the rhythm of this matriarch.
There would be no race, no finish line
In my time of riding horses.
Instead, I learned to sit properly
To read the gestures of a mother
Who has done it all before
And will get me home
Better versed in
Knowing my place.
Giants carry us,
And they deserve our love.
Animal Allergies
ReplyDeleteJazz strains on every corner,
Hooves clacking on pavement,
traffic carefully navigating tiny,
French Quarter streets
as pedestrians and carriages
shared the byways.
Heard it all; saw little –
Not Brennan's, Bourbon Street,
Jackson Square, or St Louis Cathedral.
Not a glimpse of Bohemian charm
Or old-world architecture.
Face swollen, eyes teary
from horse-powered dander,
I knew then I'd never ride,
Nor feel the explosiveness,
Of beast bursting to gallop
Through open meadow,
Round grassy oval,
Thrusting through the pack
Down the stretch we come.
From couch, summer cool,
In grandstands fall evenings,
That's as close
As I'd plan to get.
What a wonderful poem, part reminiscence, part wisdom gained from those memories. The horse is a matriarch and you learned from her as you learned from your mother. I keep going back to the last line and savoring it: Giants carry us, and they deserve our love. There is so much packed into that line. Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem.
ReplyDeleteSorry my comment above landed in the wrong place, Ed. I love the way you start your poem with sounds, everything you heard, then you list what you didn’t see. It’s an intriguing mystery until you explain your allergy. Your description of the explosiveness of a beast bursting to gallop is wonderfully descriptive, in fact the whole poem puts me right there in that place and situation, even though you are describing what you will not experience. You will be on a cool summer couch or in the grandstands. So much great sensory information in this poem makes it really work beautifully.
ReplyDeleteHeart of Becoming
ReplyDeleteTheir heels make a thunderous racket
as they parade the length of the runway.
Long-legged, sleek, insouciant,
with shimmering manes—
auburn, gold, chestnut—
they pause, one by one,
pivot & pose,
swirl & flounce a flirty skirt or cape,
their fine heads held high above the admiring crowd.
So beautiful, bored, unreadable.
We look up into those young masked faces
wondering, “Who are you, really?”
Beneath the make-up and haute couture
is there the beating heart
of a warm-blooded, real woman,
a woman in love with life?
One who laughs long and hard at vintage sitcoms,
who doesn’t mind acting foolish on Halloween,
who sometimes goes shopping with no make-up and unwashed hair,
and gives impromptu parties, not caring if the house isn’t perfectly clean.
A woman who is losing interest in one night stands,
who longs for women friends she doesn’t have to compete with,
who loves being at the top of her game, but might want
to give it all up for a husband, a baby, a house in the suburbs
and being able to eat whatever she wants without feeling guilty.
Who finds herself prone to walking on riverbanks
and leaning against old trees.
Who has a heart in the process of becoming.
Julie Cook
Nice Julie. By default I was thinking horses. Took me a second to realize where you had gone. At masked faces, I was thinking the horses with their blinders on as I read quickly the first time. Nicely done.
DeleteThanks, Ed. I was thinking the models are like thoroughbreds and I purposely wrote it that way; Plus we were primed to think about horses from the monthly poem. But I wonder if it’s confusing even to readers who hadn’t read the horse poem. Wonder if I should make the distinction clearer in the beginning. Thoughts?
ReplyDeleteMaybe only if you want people to think about horses. I say I did because if that poem. I think it works as a stand alone.
Delete