Hippophobia - by Chloe Wilson

ISLAND | ISSUE 156

RUNNER-UP, GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2018

Sabrina Sidney, Stowe House, 1770

1 White Wax, or Paper

Someone’s taint or blot. That’s
how I shouldered my way
into this world. Neither of us

forgot it. No prayer-book softened
by the riffling of penitent fingers
can compensate for infamy. He said

he was my teacher. He said
he was beneficent. You see
how one’s vocabulary can expand –

ignoble, imbecilic. Foundling. He rounded
my vowels. My mind stretched
like the dough I made while he slept.

It rose before he rose, while the ducks
quacked their particular wisdom.
Ah, he said. Observe the constellations,

the passage of the seasons. The arachnid
eating her sleeping mate. He locked
my door. The lake froze. I scraped

my name in chalk. An absent whisper:
Monimia. Ann. Four floors –
I’d dream in routines

of dust and scrubbing.
Any thieved minute, I’d dip
my head into the well, and scream.

2 Emile

Before dawn, he’d have me
dress heavily. My task:
walk to the lake, and keep walking

until I was up to my neck. Every hesitation
a disappointment, and minuted.
The ducks fled. Now I know why

they say the devil
has sub-zero blood. How I longed
for hellfire when the dark water

climbed my skirts. After, I’d lie
in an open field, and watch the sky
pull the sun from its memory. Steam rose,

as though I were becoming spirit, some quick
and invulnerable element. Acrid
with lanolin, I received

the next lesson: the return of feeling
will hurt. Later, in the dim afternoons,
I was summoned. Turn, he’d say.

Lower your dress. Then the smell
of sealing wax, melting. I thought: I am a letter,
whose contents he wants to conceal.

3 The Fear of Horses

Summer, and we’d march to a sinewy tree.
Stand there, he’d say. Don’t move.
Another word for the slate: obeisance.

But who would not shrink under the scrutiny
of the muzzle – who would not leap
at the report, which sent ducks bursting

from the reeds. Then relief in a drunken rush.
My hands in my hair, my skirts. I’m alive,
I’m alive. In the end, there was only one fear

he couldn’t strip from me. Hippophobia.
From the Greek. He’d hold a horse by the bridle
and say: come here. He stamped

the way a horse would stamp, two sets
of hot breath and dark eyes
so glossy they seemed glass-cased.

But it was too late. He’d taught me
all the arithmetic I needed
to calculate that one stallion

could contain five spitting abolitionists.
Yet when I received word
of my benefactor’s death, I felt

a certain coming to terms
with horses. The letter regretted
to express that one had thrown him

into the next world. It said she was a beast
he had attempted to break
with kindness. ▼

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This poem appeared in Island 156 in 2019. Order a print issue here.

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