Liquid blood found inside a prehistoric 42,000 year old foal.
Siberian Times, April 16th, 2019
Bog Dobbin, Equus lenensis, leggy newborn
foal – dirt-stiffened, like a toy abandoned
and exposed by a melting patch of snow,
its bay plush caked with clay. The mud
he drank when he drowned and a guzzle
of mare’s milk turning sour slosh inside
his gut. Hot-water bottle grown cold,
pajama-bag stowing undigested dreams,
shriveled wineskin holding dregs of a vinegary
elixir – the infant’s heart is a veiny sponge
a-sop with the world’s oldest blood.
In a Siberian lab scientists draw fluid
from the golem laid before them on the slab,
seeking in vials of urine and cruor
claret conjurations to reconstitute its soul
in a petri dish. In a sterile stable the chosen
host stands placid in her stall, vessel made ready
to bear and birth a shadow of the resurrected foal.
Little Horse of the Apocalypse, whose blunt
mahogany face is carved with sound-holes
like an antique instrument’s, whose unshod hooves
are crude omegas curved with luck, whose equine gaze
is a dirt-glazed pane through which the past
stares into the now-known now: shudder
creature! Stamp your four feet free of muck,
snort puffs of dust as sounds screech drily
across taut untuned chords strung
in your throat – a wakening shriek: the scream
you must scream to summon your Rider.
Rise stallion, whinny, flick your black tail.
Catherine Greenwood has lived in British Columbia, New Brunswick, China and southeast England. She recently moved to South Yorkshire where, as a PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield, she is pursuing an interest in Scottish Gothic poetry. Past jobs include publications analyst, foreign expert, financial aid adjudicator and pet sitter. Her poetry has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies and been recognized with several prizes, including a gold National Magazine Award and the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award. Along with Gothic poetry, she has been working on a neo-Gothic novel.