Friday, June 22, 2007

She Had Some Horses



Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at a wrung sponge.

Joy Harjo is a Creek (or Muskogee) Indian poet. I first learned about her in my first year of college, when I took a class called Women's Poetry and Performance. I read a lot of good poetry in that class. Harjo's poetry blew me away, and still does. I think of "She Had Some Horses" every time I drive past the Wild Horse Monument.

She Had Some Horses, by Joy Harjo

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.
She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.
She had horses who were skins of ocean water.
She had horses who were the blue air of sky.
She had horses who were fur and teeth.
She had horses who were clay and would break.
She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.
She had horses who laughed too much.
She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.
She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

Read the rest of the poem here.

6 comments:

limpy99 said...

But did she have any saddles?

Saints and Spinners said...

Limpy99: What do you think? (Stereotypical therapist response.)

Anonymous said...

That poem kicks almighty posterior.

xxxxxx said...

I loved it!

I have this book of Native Indian prayers I bought that I adore. I bought it specifically because one poet rewrote the 22nd psalm in a really cool way. It brought tears to my eyes for some reason.

I love the resonance of Native Indian poetry, and in my mind I hear their voices reciting the poems. I love the accents Native Indians have, their voices have such a musical quality.

If that makes any sense.

Myth said...

WOW! Thank you so much for sharing that poem - I am sending it to my sister right now! (We have a Creek indian woman in our ancestry - she married a Scotsman & went back to Scotland with him). I have inherited a string of her beads & want to chase up her history for Wombat's sake - so the link to the Creek site is fantastic too! (It is the last three lines of the full Harjo poem that my sister really needs today - she was due to give birth yesterday and my notoriously unreliable mother promised to be there 3 days ago... when my sister rang last night, mum still hadn't left for the 10 hour drive!!! so she is definitely struggling with some love/hate issues)

Saints and Spinners said...

I'm really glad you all liked the poem. The last lines really do resonate.