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 Contents | November 2003 More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly. |
Journey
by Erica Funkhouser .....  Hear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)In need of a journey, I traveled all the way from the rose to the potato and kept going. The mud was unbearable, the wind a knife. Not one bite to eat, not even a cup of tea-stained water, but at last I was on my way, alive and alone. In flat country, I dozed off. When I awoke, a city was rising from the grain with its own onion-yellow moon. It was then I remembered feeding apples to horses in autumn, how the horses tossed their heads back to tumble the fruit against their tilted teeth as they ground the apples down. Sprays of pink foam flew from their mouths and landed on me like garlands. The sweet joy of slobber is one I had forgotten, and the joy of being nuzzled by huge animals begging for more, all their impatience in their lips.
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Erica Funkhouser's most recent collection of poems is Pursuit (2002). She teaches at MIT. Copyright © 2003 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; November 2003; Journey; Volume 292, No. 4; 88. |
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