Death

I hate you and the horse you rode in on.
I hate your black hat, your black boots, your cloak
darker than oblivion. Carrion
memories attend you, and I hate them—oak-

galled ink scribblings in the margins of your
book. I hate the pain you cut with a steel
quill across the faces I love, how you roar
in bone-silence, deeper and more surreal

than the bedrock ticking of clocks or time
itself. I hate how you invade this form
of love, this sonnet, twisting its pretzeled rhyme
to your own echoless ends: unsound, infirm.

I shall stare you down. I shall take the reins.
Pale horse, your rider walks away in chains.

Leslie Schultz

The photograph of the white swirl on the water was taken at the glacial pothole park at Taylor’s Falls on the St. Croix River, a bit north of here. The other photographs were taken in Savannah, Georgia.

LESLIE

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