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Horses, and: Hawk Country, and: Sonnet with Puncture Wound, and: Augury, and: Jonquil

2023; University of Missouri; Volume: 46; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mis.2023.0005

1548-9930

Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer,

Short Stories in Global Literature

Horses, and: Hawk Country, and: Sonnet with Puncture Wound, and: Augury, and: Jonquil Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer (bio) Horses I'd have known the horses anywhere, sweat-slickedmuscle and twenty hands high, all wet nose and one crusted tooth in each of their mouths. I knew themby their barnyard stench, their piles of shit, by their names: Hemmingway. Prince. Comet.I never learned to ride the way my sister rode, all legs and clear commands, riding cropdusting the horse's flank in a steady tapping motion. In fact one summer, I screamed because a horse stepped onmy foot and I thought I heard bone snap. For an hour, I rubbed circles into my ankle, terrified to rotate it and be proven right.Everyone rolled their eyes as the instructor admonished me, Does it really hurt that bad? I've always been a bad animal. I've always been badat determining real danger, like the man who said he wouldn't hurt me as his hand clutched a pulpy knot of my hair.My face lit up pale in his bathroom afterwards, the blood between my thighs red and pulsing. I checked my eyes, saw nothingin the dark pupils except my own terror; I called it love. I saw a horse get branded once in a movie. I could smell it, could seethe tossing of its head in fear, how it was tied down by the neck. [End Page 155] And then the movie where a man wakes to a horse headin his bed and screams and screams. In both instances, I was the horse. When I told her what happened, my mother just turned, lookedat me darkly, as though through a funhouse mirror. Congratulations, she said. You're a woman now. [End Page 156] Hawk Country Miles from the place where I learnedhow to walk into the soft part of a man's fist, I am watching the night quicken over treetops.The birds go calling home. They sweeten the nudging dark with song while shades of blue—Prussian, Savoy, Cobalt—brag about the forest floor. They are doing the best they can to hasten the evening on. I'm living in it, an intruder,small creature with clipped wings. For a moment, I owe no allegiances. I steal an hourfor my life. No man here, no livid patch of blood burst on my arm, no fingerprints gone yellow on the fat.No voice in my ear telling me he'd make me cum. And above, the hawk flies unencumbered.He knows where he's going, and now? So do I. Away from here, where my mother callsfrom the house. I will never be from here again. God—had I wanted this bounty,I would have asked for it. [End Page 157] Sonnet with Puncture Wound Picture it: the blood-flooded garden, memoryslunk into the odd, dark corners. Here, a nailfinds its heaven in the soft underbellyof a foot. I know of heaven, have heard the trumpetsopening their throats to a jeering crowd and have called myselfsaved. My brother howled as he received the benediction:a gloved hand pulling the nail from his foot, the tetanus shotthat followed. This will hurt, the doctors intoned seriouslyas the needle, tiny harbinger, dove toward his arm. I hid underthe table. How often we hide from what we don'tunderstand. The sun, so bright through the window it was almostunbearable. The screams of children when they saw the blood.The moment the nail found skin, and the shock of it.If there is a God, He has a lot to answer for. [End Page 158] Augury Yes, I have seen the murmuration. The birds, dippingthemselves into night. The river so long by now we've forgottenwhere it began, and if it even matters. The landscape, brokenby a startle of wings, the crows, their murder on a power line. Yes, I have seen the sky blink its lights out. When you kissedme that first time in the park, where we talked about your father, hisfamily, my mother, my family...