CROOKED ARROW
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Mary Ann Honaker

WHAT CAN'T BE HELD

I dreamed of a carnival at night; a maze of linen tents flapping against their hoistings.
Women with kohl-lined eyes and long layered dresses, shiny objects dangling in stalls.

It was now, and the lights of the rides reflected in a lake, spinning, rising, falling.
It was not now. Nearby horses huffed, hitched to posts.

I held in my right hand a wad of cash as thick as a dictionary.  I did not care about it,
but I did not let it go.  I was looking for someone in the maze of tents, 

in the dazzle of lights.  I did not expect to find him.  I wandered if one of the women
read cards, or peered into a clear bowl of water, if she could see how I would find him?

Where was he?   Also, lights on the lake.  The water lapped; they lolled 
but did not blur.  Rising and falling ones left streaks, spinning ones circles,

the water black, the water clear as air near my toes. I wanted to catch this to keep.
I remembered a white horse in full gallop beneath me through a tunnel of trees, sun high,

leather of reins held slack as the horse stretched his muscled neck, his gait gaining haste.
I wanted to tell of the gray-blue dapples dripping from his neck like rain,

dapples dripping from me, tears made by sun and leaves, by speed and breeze.
Telling this seemed more important than where I rode to. Telling, a task I knew I'd never complete. 


​
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Rattle.com, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia. She tweets at @MaryAnnHonaker1.
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  • About
  • Submissions
  • Bullseye
  • Issue 6
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