The Torturer’s Horse
Lost Subjects Found Objects, page 10
ISBN 1-879457-57-1
Finders Keepers Press
San Francisco, 1998
The torturer’s horse scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
—
W.H. Auden
Meanwhile back at the ranch the rider dozes
through a dream of chemical invention the glory
of roseate days the defoliant war captured
with one throw of the lariat: comic opera presents
the film star as Colonel Bird seizing power
from General Worm
His chief of staff withholds the latest news from Brazil
all those cheap shoes and martyred priests attract
Exxon and the slide-rule engineers to the town
deep in the jungle where the natives hide in trees
He returns to sleep assured that the cinema world
offers a scenario of miracles to soothe the consumer....
Meanwhile the torturer’s horse — somewhere off camera —
dreams of the universal grass: north or south or east or west:
grazing in all those fields: the dream too commonplace for
(1977/85)
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