God Knows

Any sixteen-hand Paint can trample a man.

That’s why you’ve got to be careful of a skittish horse.

I walk behind my daughter, perched in all her glory on Sid, name my father adopted because he
was teased for being Oscar. Oscar four eyes, Oscar four eyes.

God knows I am not afraid of horses. Rode English when I was young.

Turned out into a pasture across from NASA to ride bareback under the tutelage of an
equestrienne who taught me to jump and fall, jump and fall until I could no longer get back on.

I keep my distance when my daughter shows me how she doesn’t have to pick the frogs of her
well-shod, lame right-foot horse named Sid.

Is my father Sid in heaven? Or in earth beneath the Hawthorne?

A slender root stretches between me and my daughter. She inherited the Ashkenazi gene, got a
quarter Aussie thrown into the bargain.

Here she comes at a walk, then trot, then the dangerous perfection of a cantor.

I remember the wooden rocking horse she rode when she was two.

She reins sweaty Sid in using her hands and thighs. Signals of a language I have no way of
comprehending.

I look up at her on her throne next to the sun. He wants to run, she says, you can’t let a horse
bolt back to the barn.

I ask her why he wants to run. God knows.

The Shrew

Brought to the deck in rigor mortis,
tail hung squarely between two boards,
hands and feet splayed,
sharp nose pointed at the dawn—
I have no choice but to look it up
and wonder which goals (in shrew
symbolism) I’ve been neglecting.
What more worldly desires have I
to overcome? Clothes, money,
the desire for a pain-free life—
is that too much to ask?
Big black eye open and reflecting
a bit of cloud from the summer sky.
Cleft mouth about to speak,
if shrews could talk, about hardship
and the Maine Coon that came from nowhere
though it easily could have died
from being picked up or hearing thunder.
In that way I feel a certain kinship
and wish the man hadn’t thrown it
into the trash bin. I’d have kept this shrew
around, had it eviscerated and hung
in my bedroom as a symbol,
even if the taxidermist I hired had to ask
(working deep in the guts of the thing)
those questions regarding my need
for a three-dimensional model
of what Shakespeare used for one oeuvre.
That’s one famous play, he (the taxidermist)
would say and I’d nod,
remain silent, my lips pressed together
as the skin underwent disinfection
before this entity far smaller than a deer
or an elk became the totem
above a double bed I share with no one.

Judith Skillman’s poems have appeared in Commonweal, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She has received awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Oscar the Misanthropist won the 2021 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Her recent collection is Subterranean Address, New & Selected Poems, Deerbrook Editions 2023. Visit www.judithskillman.com, https://www.facebook.com/judith.skillman