Sandy Longhorn
Petition
~after Malinda Markham
On the days I am heavy, leaden,
bid me swallow the chemical thorn
meant to pierce the pleated marrow,
meant to prod both singe and song.
Bitters also serve.
You say I slack & limp, am muted static,
the gutted end of the wick.
Rouse me with a platter smashed,
your fingers bloodied by the splinters.
Then, I might rise to fetch swaddling
strips, the sting of antiseptic,
and the heart-heat needed for the
charge of one tethered to an injured
creature.
Sandy Longhorn is the 2016 recipient of the Porter Fund Literary Prize and the author of three books of poetry. The Alchemy of My Mortal Form, her latest book, won the 2014 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press. Her other books are The Girlhood Book of Prairie Myths and Blood Almanac. Her poems have appeared in The Cincinnati Review, diode, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hotel Amerika, Tupelo Quarterly, and in many more literary journals and anthologies. Longhorn teaches in the Arkansas Writers MFA program at the University of Central Arkansas, where she directs the C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference.
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