Six-Legged Mare

by | Issue #3, Issues

Ed note: An earlier version of this poem originally appeared at honeyfirelit in October 2021.


You and I could simply touch

we’d create
a monster

six-legged mare

it wouldn’t fit in a barn                                 we’d need to retreat
                                                                      past punishing valleys
                                                                      past the antler trail

                            they couldn’t reach us
                            see what we’ve done

                            what we’ve made

I do like
our nightmare stallion

black flamed grace
she comes and goes
shuffling on snow

                                                       six         six
                                                                    six         six
                                                                                   six         six

at night
she hunts

we don’t know
what she finds
or what she eats
or what she wants

she reminds me of us
no questions no origins

bad omens born
from nature’s wrath

what did they think would happen
if we did

touch?





Jessica Jemalem Ginting is a poet, editor, translator and comic writer from Jakarta, Indonesia, currently living in London. She writes in the realm of speculative poetry, with influences from genre literature and films. If she were to abandon everything tomorrow, she would run away to take a beekeeping course and join a forest restoration project. She enjoys the concept of gender, but does not have one. Her latest ‘apocalyptic-party’ themed poetry chapbook, Voyages, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2021.