PRINCEMERE POETRY PRIZE

A Country Horse-Doctor

It's the peregrine hour when all those who the day
demands something from are bracing
for it. At the pharmacy counter, the constable's tie is already
argyled in sausage gravy. & there's a liquor smirch
on the trifling briefs the magistrate didn't get
around to last night (but hellfire he will still
adjudicate them come petty claims court). Snow is on the ground
maggot-white, & the shop windows are chintzy
with sleet. But still there is this tumbleweeding

of the heart. If our county were any bigger
than a sitcom set, they would all herd lemminglike into the rough
spun monochrome of gas stations, outlet malls, & plyboard huts
where you can rent VHS tapes
rewound by mice & silverfish. Instead
most are at home, huddled up against the anachronism
of a woodstove, losing the staring match
to their oatmeal. But I don't have much
in the way of pathos for them. I was dogged

out of a dream hours ago by a man who said he'd blueblacked
his shins wading in a nightshirt through two miles of January
to the handiest phone. His Walking Horse
was in a pitiable way. So, jaw set, I went. I did a siege
time defrost—just cleared a murderhole's worth
of sight—& within a cigarette I was dreaming again about the white
flour of my wife's thighs, the dark between them
warm as fission. But my tires went over the municipal salt
like someone eating ice, & it made me stay

froggy. I held fast through the long gray caterwaul. They were gathered
hat-in-hand mournful around the horses' shanty. Greetingless, I saw
to its teeth, breast & rearmost quarter. But nowhere could I
find anything gone sideward—the horse just lagged there, stalactites
of cold coming off its nostrils, chuffing
raw cosmos. I asked what the matter was. They pussyfooted.
One finally said we think she ate a pint bottle. I looked at them
like that was routine. You think? Why, another said, Jasper there
tuckered over in its stall around 10 with a glass pint in his shirtpocket

& when I came up on him it wasn't nowhere findable. The third man,
Jasper, I wagered, had some mortifications on his face & was less
a canine from getting the everloving piss clapped out of him. So
there he mooned, altogether woo-woo from their unchurched
amends. Well, you all'll have to watch her over this next day & see
if she grubs like usual & if her bowels are moving. It's kindly strange
that she'd pay any mind to a glass bottle, let alone gobble it. But
if she did there'll be an obstruction & that can get vicious. Odds are
your pint will turn up. Those three just stared at me—men so beggared

that citified ducks would throw bread at them—until one said
we'd rather you just go ahead & dig around after it. They were trigger
happy. & I knew if I didn't do the doctoring myself, they would
vivisect the poor thing. My toolkit, frosted through, made an accordion
yap coming open. But the horse didn't shy or quail when I came
with the needle, the fluid stupor. & in the quell before
insentience, its face was a plaster ruin. I wanted to ease into her
with diplomacy, not parse her guts like they were so much

paperwork. So for a grizzly while, I was ungloved & civil-fingered—
the three men piled behind me in skunk-breathed expectance. &, as is
wont for farce, I found it there at the mouth of the wombholler: a waxy
bottle. I couldn't believe how smartly it was wedged, swaddled
in hormones, so there was no mutiny among the organs. Fairytale
snug, I didn't even want to take the forceps to it. But I did, &
salved & gauzed her shut. She slept like a newlywed. I gave
the men the pint, tinseled in afterbirth, & they made Christmas
faces—it was mostway full. They each took out a novelty

shot glass & poured it brim-high. This was too intimate
to watch, like seeing someone honor a Do Not
Resuscitate, so I turned to leave, knowing they hadn't any means
of paying up. But, wordless, to me

they tithed those first three shots. What can a man do
but slug them down, shake their hands? I stepped
out into the morning ruthlessly
lucid.

Ian Hall has won this year's $300 Princemere Poetry Prize for "A Country Horse-Doctor."

Runners-up are Carlos Andrés Gómez's "Home is Not an Address," and Lisa Mullenneaux's "Lift." Each wins $100.

Finalists this year are Harry Bauld, Mary Buchinger, Brad Davis, John Davis, Henry Delaney, Ann DeVilbiss, Rebecca Faulkner, Linda Flaherty Haltmaier, Joshua Kulseth, Bradley Samore, Stuti Sinha, and Lauren Sweeney.

We are grateful to everyone who submitted.

-the Princemere Team (L. Applegate, J. Backert, J. Dickson, E. Fernandes, A. Gorton, L. Lamm, D. Larson, M. Miyares, MS Murray, Z. Robinson, B. Russo, M. Stevick, R. Swenson)

(Click the tabs above to see previous winners.)