The bad man lashed me to the tracks,
then laughed. The front row ladies gasped
as in the paper distance, between
the painted hills, a freight train
suddenly appeared. You rescued me
on horseback & we galloped off
unharmed, hooves kicking a confetti
of dust across imitation desert.
When the time arrived to kiss
we danced. I swooned on cue. You wooed
by rote. I knew that you romanced
me for the camera only. Still I felt
your palm raise heat across my back
as we tapped through our final dance.
The words we never spoke just flashed
across the screen. The silences
I felt for you unhorsed me, love,
and then you left. I called for you
but couldn't hear my voice above
applause. The pianist played us out.
©
is the author of Double Jinx: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2015), winner of the 2014 National Poetry Series. Her poems have most recently appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, 32 Poems, and Smartish Pace. She is a doctoral candidate in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also earned her MFA in poetry.
We’ve published three more poems by Reddy: “Before & After, Botched,” “Rabbit Starvation,” and “Come Fetch.”
