Sample Poems by Colette Inez

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Horseplay

Horselaugh from that hussy on the piebald.
Horsefly don't bother.
How many horses to carry the red

afternoon as it rides over the blue plateau?
The astronomer pins her wrists to the dust.
Hoarse voices. Brambles like stars.

Horsewhipped. Giddyap. Hearsay evidence
of horsehide, horsehair sofas,
horse heard naysaying.

She knees him where he's weak.
His hands on her shouldesr sweep down
to her breasts.

The hare's afeard of hearses, hisses.
Nightmares ride bareback.
Four Horsemen talking horse sense.

He says the universe hasn't run its course,
She races away. Mythical horses jumping light years.
The Square of Pegasus desires its hypotenuse.

"Here's looking at you and The Horsehead
Nebula, "the publican nods to the astronomer.
"Ow, that's an 'orse of a different color."

The star bloke orders a White Horse Ale.
"Horseman, pass by, " the woman appears,
nice as you please, pokes him in the eye,

imagines the chap punching empty air
garlanded by stars.

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Two-wheeler Spins

She wakes up and she’s a bicycle
Streamlined, at last.
Bicycles are naturally anorexic.

Sometimes her husband pats her seat.
Sex is not out of the question.
They're not a run of the mill couple.

She wakes up and she's a rowboat,
sturdy in the water.
The couple she carries
are her parents, red-faced
and exhausted after sex.
She drifts in silence,
heavy with their regret.

Or she wakes up and she's a door
leaning against the bicycle
she once was, or a boat.
How to keep her husband
alert in these scenes?

He pulls out a key.
They're face to face
remembering excursions.
Inside their rooms, the parents
live quietly in picture frames.

---

Little Pig of Beauty

sets the swine style tone
in her pen. Too frail to breed, moon-hued lashes,
dainty trotters, all the rage through scented days
of corn, zucchini, beefsteak tomatoes
ripening in tune to her soprano squeal,
bass snuffle of the suitor
who overcomes her diffidence
until the blunt end of an axe
put the kibosh on her bliss.
At dinner I said thanks to a second helping.
From the kitchen mirror flashed back a twitch
of snout, eyes screwed in their sockets
blinking watery blue.



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Attributes of Summer

Brown grow the rushes
you know hot hay
girl's roll downhill
and hard dirt thirsty
for cascades
a humble fall acoming
leaf peepers thwarted
it's the commonplace
of cracked earth
and desire
always forswearing
something or other
upon my oath,
I asked my love
what he recants
at Lammastide
a let's pretend harvest
of shriveled corn
my rose-scented finger tips
the buttery shine of the sun

---

Rooster South of Worcester
(on joue le tennis)

No badass, Wallace without malice in madras
shirt and tennis racket, fault not

that damned insurance jock beneath the sun
as second man to your brash backhand.

Serve! Serve! Serve! Serve! You are impersonal.
Your couplets are you. I am as I scan.

Antaeus poet among pygmies. Serve!
Return! A pygmy forages for honey.

Forages and drums far from Cos Cob
and dreams not ample Stevens nor his lob.