This Horse

There’s this horse
that can’t eat apples.
It’s not that the horse
doesn’t like apples
or that its castle of teeth
can’t crush them
or that its leather-satchel tongue
can’t collect the bits
or that its upturned welly of a throat
can’t tramp down the chunks –
 
it’s that one day,
as it drew up an apple
of no distinction,
the horse had a thought:
‘What if I choke on this?’
And the more the horse tried
to swat the thought away,
the more the apple grew,
and the more the thought grew
 
until the horse felt it had Jupiter
and all its moons in its mouth
and it couldn’t breathe
and it was gagging
and its owner tried to reason with it,
but the horse wouldn’t be told
and over the course of a year
the horse visited the vet
every Wednesday at 12
 
and the vet advised the horse
to try an exercise where the horse
had to choose a small globe
from a bagged assortment
and hold each one in its mouth
in a series of graded steps:
a robin’s egg for one minute,
a beetroot for two,
a cannonball for three;
 
and the horse had to
‘commit to the process’
and ‘tolerate the discomfort’
and by all means note down
its thoughts and feelings
but not respond to them
and none of this worked
and the only thing for the horse
to do was to eat oats and practise
radical acceptance
of apples as something eaten
by other horses
in another place and time
as if all the apples in the world
were locked behind
glass cabinets
in a museum
with all the other things
the horse’s thoughts had
forced it to give up:
cool pools,
hugs of mud,
low-hedged fields.
 

Sarah Barnsley

first published in Under the Radar 18, Winter 2016, 10-11,
ISSN 1758-3357

 
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The domestic white-throated Lincoln imp lizard (familia albigularis)

Distant relatives
of the iguana,
they have dwelt
in this dank corner
 
of the Midlands
for several millennia.
They were here
before the Romans,
 
the coaching inns,
the highwaymen,
the ghost tours,
they pre-date
 
the cabbages,
the onions,
the creation of the
Lincolnshire sausage.
 
They have seen it all
and they have seen you,
coming up the path with
your London ways
 
like untied shoelaces,
your university education
splatted in your hair
like pigeon shit.
 
Their tongues have
exceptional reach,
capable of snaring
a small child which
 
they can take years
to digest. Visitors
should exercise caution.
Do not bang on the glass.
 

Sarah Barnsley

in pamphlet collection The Fire Station, Telltale Press, 2015,
ISBN 978-0-9928555-3-6;
published in Magma 46, Spring 2010, 36,
ISSN 1352-9269

 
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Today you went to lunch with a cave

It wasn’t the first time, so your eyes
didn’t widen when it arrived, trying
the door first frontwards, then side-on
like an overgrown shore crab.
 
The waiter took its shabby
medieval cart as the cave sloped
into its seat, spreading its grey
slabs around like dusty skirts.
 
The table next to you stared
deep into the cave’s mouth;
it performed a polite smile of
rock and lichen, debris breaking
 
at the corners like torn bread.
You asked the cave how it was,
talked about the weather, what
a nightmare the bus was, but
 
there was no echo and you wondered
if you had got the right cave. You
lobbed in more words, some sharp
as flint, others smooth as shale,
 
and you heard, in the distance, contact
with water, the sound of weighted
objects, plummeting, and you knew
that this was your cave all right,
 
the cave you drifted into one
Spring day on a Cornish beach
and buried secrets in disturbed sands,
the cave which, over the years,
 
gave you shelter, adventure, whose
fissures grew like cracking ice,
whose darkness was washed darker
by restless tides until there were
 
overcast days like these where
the cave came to you and you couldn’t
tell whether it was finally still
or just a wave away from collapse.
 

Sarah Barnsley

first published in The Rialto, 89, Late Summer 2017, 26,
ISSN 0268-5981

 
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Think of it in terms of geometry

on good days
I am mistaken
for an isosceles triangle,
 
balanced enough
to fit in to
human patterns
 
of backgammon boards,
boat sails,
the hands of a clock
 
and this would be fine
if it wasn’t
for the angles,
 
amending my surface
area with
their expansions
 
and contractions
of papery
doubt.
 
It’s hard work
holding three sides
at once,
 
maintaining
a tent
of composure,
 
flapping
bunting on cold,
lightless days
 
against
the sure
dial of protractors.
 

Sarah Barnsley

first published in Under the Radar, 18, Winter 2016, 12-13,
ISSN 1758-3357

 
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