Humans & Horses Page 5
nothing like the feet of others
but the feet I hear right now
are my feet only
and only my feet are thrumming
as I hum
a new tune waiting for
what’s next
having heard all our feet
met
with apprehension
and disapproval
and the victory
or horses
we used to be so proud of
our parades
now that I have a head
that spins
in my hands
and a world
larger
than the Atlantic
in my mouth
I don’t know what I’ll do with myself
or how
to bury
a thing
that
destroys itself only to move about
and go on
which is a contradiction
to boot
and as I think
and sink
with the sun that outlasts every single one of us
I’ll worry more later
about where the next starting line is
though the line
is what
I’m trying
to get away from
we’ll all fall back in line
from gravity and the forces of friendly strangers
and prodding hands
that want to get us off
and on
onto what
kind of plan
I don’t certainly know
But I am here
right beside me
winking at the fallen body
rocked steadily
by the pull and push
of currents
the current thing to do is just go with it
If I’m not trying to win anything
what will I get?
If I push myself up
off the earth
and get back on that horse
where will I go?
Something tells me I killed the bird too soon.
Something says I shouldn’t have killed it at all.
Something tells me I forced this “direction”
which is
of course
off course
and against
THE RULES.
Something else is telling me
It’s not yr fault. You don’t have a say in this. What race?
Yr in. And yr about to, again, begin.
But I don’t want to. Not for a while, anyway. Maybe not
ever. Maybe I’ll never have a choice
with the way the gun is pointed,
anyhow. Maybe I’ll prepare myself by not preparing
and only look forward
to the look of surprise
on yr
face, when I show up again. As I know that those
left behind
will find us again. With love and late morning brunches
and beers at dusk with baseball on the radio
and soft light rubbing the blinds, our blinders on
for now
only so that we only see each other, face to face
with a good buzz
in our heads. In the light. The falling light.
The beautiful light
of an ending day. In that light
you and me and them. In that light
that smells of asphalt
and wild flowers
and expansiveness. The light that pushes from the side
instead of down. A leaning against
houses
and homes. You and me and them. In that
light standing still
with each other standing in the light, still. You
and me
and them. Standing very still now, aglow. You
and me and them. Not moving for the sound
of birds or guns or drums. You and me and them. Standing now
with the buzz
of it all
just ringing between our ears and the light
in our eyes
fulfilled. You and me and them. Standing
and buzzing, stilled. We have gone around
without reaching an end, breaking the tape,
or getting our faces
in the papers,
we’ve found each other, even after you’ve gone,
been gone, were gone,
had gone for good.
For good.
You
and me
and them.
Still.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Logan Ryan Smith is author of the fiction books, ENJOY ME, WESTERN PALACES, MY EYES ARE BLACK HOLES, and Y IS FOR FIDELITY. His poetry books include BUG HOUSE, STUPID BIRDS, and THE SINGERS & THE NOTES. Work has appeared in New American Writing, Hobart Journal, BAY POETICS, Mirage #4/Period[ical], Where Eagles Dare, Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Bout Bout, String of Small Machines, and Great Lakes Review, which nominated his story, “Bret Easton Ellis,” for a Pushcart Prize. Logan lived in San Francisco for 11 years where he published the poetry zine, small town, and the chapbook series, Transmission Press. He has also lived in Chicago and now lives in Sacramento, California.
WORDS ABOUT HUMANS & HORSES FROM HUMANS…
After reading this book I dreamt I had a sex change and woke after surgery looking EXACTLY like Logan Ryan Smith! “BUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE,” you say. I KNOW, I KNOW! Which poem did it to my dream? “…faulty memory / and harrowed indulgence / caught / off / guard”. Logan sticks his knee into the back of the poem’s neck on the ground, MAKING IT BEND in new ways! The illiterate should learn to read JUST to experience his transformative powers! But you can already read, you are reading this. Are you really still standing there WONDERING if you should buy this book!? Take it up to the register and pay for it NOW! GEESH!
—CAConrad, author of THE BOOK OF FRANK
Logan Ryan Smith’s HUMANS & HORSES is about humans and horses and they are both us. Humans and horses are dead and you and I are dead in this book, too. In at many times violent, sometimes escapist, always exquisitely rhythmic language, Smith takes us through a relationship of subject and object that is both relentless and crushingly tender. Smith makes language itself tender by co-constructing with the reader a chopping act of sound that is human sound in its basest form. And as well, Smith makes himself a vulnerable object, as he tells us how at once he found himself “in a place/ called ABSENCE” and we realize, that in the space of the book, we are there with him. The ABSENCE in Smith’s book, however, is not empty. Instead, it is full of things and people. For, as Smith writes, “I found a sense of worthiness when I discovered/Others. I discovered a sense of living thru them, the dead/ the unknown.” And the dead, that populate this book, are everywhere in the core of this ABSENCE, keeping us company in the midst of the terror and beauty that Smith nimbly creates, doing nothing more heroic than being the “ringing between our ears and the light/ in our eyes/fulfilled. You and me and them. Standing/ and buzzing, stilled.”
—Dorothea Lasky, author of AWE
Logan Ryan Smith’s horse is Zukofsky’s and Marx’s, the pathetic emblem of the human; but maybe even more painfully, its efforts are just “laps,” a spectacle for the viewers, who, in Smith’s grandstands, are no less worked than the horses. The gun that signals the start of their labor completes the life, and labor, of the human. Humans & Horses is the lyric record of a life lived between the gun and the payoff and back. Along the way, it’s a record full of friends, beers, architectures and, yes, records of the turntable variety. The horsepower in the book finds its expression in “ABSENSE,” which I read as a comment on the true work of memory, as a translative force derived from sensory impressions. But not all is (Spicer-inflected)-fun and games: there’s a sinister hand whose fingers stay on the trigger: “my sense of history / is a boss.”
—Bran
don Brown, author of THE GOOD LIFE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was originally slated for publication in 2009 by a publisher that never got off the ground. It was written sometime in 2008 while I was still living in San Francisco, and it owes a lot to that place and that time, as well as the people around me during the first decade of the 21st Century. That said, I’d like to thank Matthew Arnone, Brandon Brown, Armand F. Capanna II, Steve Orth, John Sakkis, David Porter, Larry Kearney, Sarah Menefee, Kevin Killian, Benjamin Hollander, Andrew Craft, Nick Buzanski, Paul Hoover, Maxine Chernoff, Steve Dickison, Parker Zane Allen, Becky Ohlson, John Greiner, Lauren Shufran, Beth Lemon, Michael Koshkin, Alissa Blackman, Elliot Harmon, Melanie Keller, Sondra Stoner, Susana Garner, Michael Slosek, Jason Hackman, Helen Lhim, Kelly Holt, CAConrad, Dorothea Lasky, Andrew K. Peterson, Robin Demers, Jared Hayes, Carrie Hunter, K. Tighe, Mike Young, Aaron Lowinger, Chantelle Patterson, David Kent Highsmith, Katrina Walker, Whiskey Thieves, The Edinburgh Castle, The Tenderloin, and the San Francisco Giants.