Kyle Laws

White Horse Carnival

Narrow outline of snout to nostrils
off center by a distraction of what’s left
of another horse in the San Luis Valley
wild after being let go when winter wheat
was expensive. He runs with what’s left
of Coronado’s strays, this passage
called Wild Horse Mesa where
fences ceased as you drop south

from Fort Garland to San Luis,
a white stallion heading this bunch
of small Arabian descendants,
brown and black against stray white
as he stands on a rise as cars motor
their way to New Mexico.

Venus Flower Basket

Hesitant to throw away the crinkled paper
a Venus Flower Basket wrapped in,
even though I sneeze because of remains 
of luminescent shrimp that lived within.

The basket—prized by Victorians—
filters food for shellfish that remain
trapped when fully grown, only their
offspring able to swim away.

They live their lives cleaning
in exchange for nourishment. 
I think of Edith Wharton characters
by windows in evening. This is not

who Mother was, but what I tossed off
the back of the ferry, along with 2/3
of a bottle of Chivas while visiting
her grave at the bottom of bay.

 

Kyle Laws is based out of Steel City Art Works in Pueblo, CO where she directs Line/Circle: Women Poets in Performance. Her collections include Beginning at the Stone Corner (River Dog, 2022), The Sea Is Woman (Moonstone Press, 2021, winner of its 2020 award), Uncorseted(Kung Fu Treachery Press, 2020), Ride the Pink Horse (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019), Faces of Fishing Creek (Middle Creek Publishing, 2018), This Town: Poems of Correspondence coauthored with Jared Smith (Liquid Light Press, 2017), So Bright to Blind (Five Oaks Press, 2015), and Wildwood (Lummox Press, 2014). She is editor and publisher of Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press.