Hannah Louise Poston

Two poems from Hannah Louise Poston’s Julia Hungry

followed by a note on the author

Fear of Horsess

The dripping from their exophthalmic eyes—
the dough inside their hooves that gives like rot—
their size, their size, their size—

their coffin-bones, their envelopes of flies—
the kisses of their whickers, rank and hot—
the dripping from their exophthalmic eyes,

their pupils marbled over like disguise—
the twisting stirrup and the flimsy crop—
their size, their size, their size—

the man that strokes his rasp along the sides
of hooves and pokes the tender frogs apart,
their thrush-affected frogs, their rolling eyes—

the rigid, the relentless bit that slides
in through the velvet lips, and hurts the slot—
their sighs, their sighs, their sighs—

I don’t like having them between my thighs—
I hate my lessons and I want to stop—
the dripping from their exophthalmic eyes—
their size, their size, their size—

 

Hannah Louise Postons

 

Grand Central Station

You took my hand and took me to the train.
The sky inhaled above us as we ran.
The weather was suspended like a crane.
The woman’s hand was taken by the man.
The train was in suspension on its tracks.
The woman took her ticket from her pocket.
You left me at the train and then went back.
The weather was a wire in a socket.
The train prepared to take me far away.
They heard a crackle issue from the sky.
You took my hand and left me anyway.
The absence took the woman by surprise.
They took my ticket and I took the train.
The sky exhaled. The man was in the rain.

 

Hannah Louise Poston

 

Hannah Louise Poston is a poet, essayist, and online content creator. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writer’s Program and she has received residencies and fellowships from MacDowell, The Ucross Foundation, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Wildacres, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several literary journals, including Ploughshares, The Yale Review, and Poetry Northwest. Her nonfiction has been featured on Longreads and has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review and The New York Times. Furtrher information is available at her website: www.hannahlouiseposton.com/