Claire Beeli (age 15)
ABECEDARIAN FOR THE HORSES IN A TRAILER ON ROUTE 66
above the hood of this
beetle of a car, the sky
carries itself lightly. hugely. blue. i
don’t know where we’re going. i don’t think you do,
either, with your fine
ears like the ends of mustaches and your
eyes, round and dark and as slow to
fall as the night. i don’t know where we’re
going but i don’t think it’s there. we can’t
grieve yet because we don’t know what for. because we don’t know
how it even began;
how to even begin. the desert here could be enough,
i think, for us. if we could
just tilt the wheel a bit too far right, to
knife through the barriers
like the rain, when it comes. i can’t stay here.
my legs ache from disuse and i keep
nudging the early sky but it won’t wake. there,
over the ridge somewhere, could be a herd, a
place for us to go. for the taste of air beyond this
quiet, far from this soft rush of
rubber on the morning. you could
start with your hooves in the sands and
the sun on your coat, light
unfiltered by the windows of this dark
van. i could start without sunscreen, with
waves of heat that hold me like a womb.
we can start here, if you want. there is no numbered-lettered
exit. there is no too late, no number of
years. there is only now, and the wheel, and the
yell that is pounding hooves, and the hot
zenith of living,
so free it hurts.
—from 2024 Rattle Young Poets Anthology
__________
Why do you like to write poetry?
Claire Beeli: “I write poetry as a sort of record, and as a medium for working out complex ideas. Each image, clever phrase, and stanza becomes a permanent record of a thought, an emotion I’ve observed, or an experience I’ve had, rendering them immortal. I’d like to think that I’ll be able to look back in 10, 20, or even 50 years to what I’ve written as a teenager and recognize each poem as a time capsule. I use writing to tease out the connections between varied, nuanced concepts, too—to form unlikely pairings of images and ideas or work out the kinks in a kind of philosophical argument. To me, it’s the most useful art form there is.”
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