beat a horse & still the dead {you never knew} know what's in your heart
better than you
here's blood in your eye
{make these bones your kindling} & retch
salt from stone {there's blood in our eyes
yet} & everything
from the dead sea we are aware & awake of your dreams
unawake & unaware that the dead dream
& there is no dead space & no dead sea no every-
thing knows something
as beating & received
there's just different planes of second-guessing :: you are still dead
last in knowing a heart {has different planes of beating} & we
the plastic horses & skeleton keys
left behind at the dollar tree
we are without hunger
for your returning
a bird passing overhead is for the living
around her wings we are the hissing
static like rickety rocking
horses were we
in your attics
& fishbowl seas
a garbage heap is a galaxy of feeling
even the wood-rot keys their splinters
cry out for your hands everywhere
is somewhere to go & a blind alley we call
home that last horse before dawn
who will carry us when there’s no one
ROSEBUD BEN-ONI is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow; her most recent collection of poems, turn around, BRXGHT XYXS, was selected as Agape Editions' EDITORS' CHOICE, and will be published in 2019. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review blog and is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her work appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Arts & Letters, among others; recently, her poem "Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark" was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. She teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension's Writers' Program. Find her at 7TrainLove.org.