Mantis 20 (Spring 2022)
Retrospective
Shane McCrae
Internal Horses
As we divorced Nicholas rode
internal horses / And watching him
from the bench at the edge of the park / In wildflowers
him in wildflowers him in fields / Of wildflowers him in fields
on playgrounds which
Blossom from the ground
and then the ground
Must be covered over with foam with bark
It was and it was possible
To love him just enough to sit there watch- / ing not enough
for us to stay together
Not more enough than us
If we had put our ears to the ground
we might have heard the horses / Carrying him our son away
the sound carried away and al- /so back both both together
Not running from and not running to us
Originally printed in Mantis 9 (2010)
SHANE MCCRAE is the author of several books of poetry, including In the Language of My Captor, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the William Carlos Williams Award, Sometimes I Never Suffered, which was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and his recent collection, Cain Named the Animal. McCrae is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Columbia University and lives in New York City.