Poetry: Christine Hamm

Little Red Pony


and the surgeons stitched you
back, black heavy thread and staples,

so in the tiny bleached bed you
looked like a girl-sewn doll,

your face wrinkling and smoothing
in sleep, your eyes making cursive

beneath their lids: shoulders, ribs
still bruised in boat-shapes from

the instruments, where they tied
you down & little red pony, little heart

galloping, how red their gloves
when they held you and started over

My Western, II


my mother forgot the suitcase
with her boots, lost me
among her uncles’ houses,
the farms spread out like
fingers, her calls faded
in the falling telephone wires

and the cows shat and shat
and shat in the cinderblock
milking shed, the rooms of
mechanized vats churning
the smell of baby vomit

our hands and OshKosh
overalls sized exactly
the same, we learned how
to use a bullwhip on the new
foals, your older brother

showed me his Harley—we
crashed together in a mucky,
sweet-smelling ditch, the yelping
one-eyed shepherd always behind us

All rights reserved to Christine Hamm