I’m More Horse Than Man

by Keith Mark Gaboury

I crushed my deformed sonnet
under a dripping rodeo light.

 

My creature of fourteen lines
bled out blood couplets

 

implanted with flat rhymes
inside a mixed metaphor.

 

Everything got forced
into the disjointed body
I’m galloping away from.

 

I’ve failed to reveal myself
until now: within my journal pages,
I’m more horse than man

 

when I neigh in a forest
of redwood-high sestinas

 

and my hooves stomp applause
before Whitman’s naked song
awakened on a grass stage

 

and I buck off a cowgirl
propelled

 

through a black ink bloodstream
resurrected on my white page.

 

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His chapbooks were released through Duck Lake Books, The Pedestrian Press, and Finishing Line Press. Keith is also the president of the Berkeley Branch of the California Writers Club. Learn more at keithmgaboury.com.