Julie Farstad, Matteo On The Table, 2017 (Artist Website)
Ink and watercolor on aquabord, 10 x 8 inches
Inside the memory of the park
is the sandbox with a shard
of glass that sliced your thumb: a ribbon
of blood pouring in a perfect spiral. Inside
the park is the concrete outbuilding crawling with
tent larvae. Inside the caterpillar is a poison: silk spun
and spit on everything it touches, a gauzy cobweb net
housed in the branches of fruit trees. Black cherry leaves kept
the pregnant mares fat the spring you made love the first time. That year,
the horses lost their foals by the thousands, some born still, some stopped short
of birth at all. It was a mystery at first. What the body does in a panic. And so many dangers
to come in the pasture. Pheasant’s eye, milkweed, snakeroot, bittersweet. Houndstongue, thorn-
apple, gumweed, palm of Christ. Even the ample goldenrod and dandelion are toxic. We don’t
expect what tears us apart. Innocent kiss on the edge of a bed. A new horse will stand within
minutes of delivery; his hooves then his head slide out in an opaque gray balloon. A different
man will fill you 12 years later, almost to the day. Trouble your womb, charge you
with life. A neat line of nothing at its hollow end. Blood from a stone.