Read a Poem
Riding a Dead Horse
by Barbara Marie Minney
Riding that horse
as far as it would go
plodding through Death Valley
like a lost cowboy
in a grainy black and white western
bones bleaching in the sun
half buried by the swirling sands
Ronald Reagan narrating in the background.
Sixty years wandering
through the arid wasteland
on a horse that was already dead
sunburned skin
blistering in the flare of the sun
searching for the watering hole
that would quench
my dry, parched soul.
That horse should have
been put out of its misery long ago
laid to rest in a holy sepulchre
revered for carrying me so long
until finding the silver stallion
vanquishing the evil doers
riding off into the sunset
with a hearty hi yo, silver.
“Riding a Dead Horse” by Barbara Marie Minney from If There’s No Heaven. Poetry Is Life Publishing, 2020. Used by permission of the author.
Barbara Marie Minney lives in Tallmadge, where she writes personal and emotional poetry about her feelings, thoughts, and passions while struggling to live her truth as a transgender woman. Her poetry has been or will be published in the
50th Anniversary Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology, the
2019/2020 Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak!, the
Gasconade Review #5, and the
Voices of Real 4 and has been exhibited at the Summit Art Space and Art x Love. Her first book of poetry,
If There’s No Heaven, will be published in May of 2020 by Poetry Is Life Publishing. Barbara’s website can be found at
https://ronzel334.wixsite.com/barbaraminneypoet.
Write a Poem
Write a poem using a horse cliché in a way that is not clichéd but is new and vibrant: dark horse, hold your horses, horse play, horse of a different color, eat like a horse, get off your high horse, charley horse, one horse town.