Joan Colby- Three Poems

BROKE –3 BROKE DOWN

Just past the wire, the fabled filly

Undefeated, until now, by her own fragility.

The cannon bone cracks audibly

And three-legged she tries to keep

Momentum as the jockey vaults off

Seizing the cheek-strap of the bridle.

The crowd, bewildered, hushes.

A cloth shield blocks what’s going to happen.

She’s down struggling while the jockey

Holds her frantic head, eye rolling

As the trainer leaps the rail.

The audience sees nothing.

In solemn tones, the announcer says

The vets are evaluating her prospects

Though like everyone beyond that veil

He knows.They don’t shoot horses

Anymore. A needle full of sleep.

She goes down in the record books.

Best 3-year-old of her generation.

Buried maybe in the infield,

Heart and hooves at least.

Not like a cheap claimer

Dragged off to the boneyard.

BROKE –6 BREAKING EGGS

Cliché of what can never be fixed,

A blemished masterpiece. Insignia of

Which came first. Unsolved mystery;

Loss of Eden. Serpent or Eve

Wiggling tracery of blame.

A sloppy dish of shattered suns

Spooned or heated into hillocks

Of an unstable motherland.

Shell of all desire,

Once white, oval as an all-seeing

Eye, sticks in resolute shards

To the golden ooze

You’ll never reassemble.

Eat, imagining somehow

You can be made whole.

BROKE --7

Glass eye to the outer world

Exists to be broken. Anything thrown,

A child’s ball, an  enemy’s stone,

The rock a spinning tire expels,

Can do the job. Fangs of dismay

Score the room. A gunshot draws

A perfect hole. Once, taxes limited

Installation. The chilly

Dark abodes of the poor

Where there was nothing

To be broken. Live here

Without dodge or hope.