Christopher C. Tennant

Decom Posit

Originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, November 2024

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I walked out to pasture

But the chief’s horse was missing

So I searched for her

And I found her lying on the ground

 

A gray mare in a brown field

Fruiting upon salted earth

 

Her hair was glossy

And her mane still silver-grey

But her eye sockets were empty

And her stomach rescinded into a grape

 

And so I wept

As blue clouds spat overhead

And the earth became moist

With the scent of eternity’s call

 

When I returned home

I wondered what had happened

 

And the fields

So filled with pollen

 

It must have been the ragwort

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