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A Horse with Holes in It

Poems

Southern Messenger Poets

80 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / no illustrations

ebook available

Poetry

  Paperback / 9780807163542 / November 2016

A Horse with Holes in It, Greg Alan Brownderville’s third collection of poetry, employs inventive phrasing and vivid imagery to construct a particular life marked by religion, confused by desire, dulled by alcohol, and darkened by death. But Brownderville also skillfully uses humor to soften the disquieting images that haunt these stanzas. Strange stories wind through these poems: Two method actors live as lovers in a wartorn city and take the stage in an empty playhouse. A poet confesses to killing thousands of Arkansas blackbirds via folk magic. A preteen boy, deeply involved in an underground religion, is pressured into marrying a dangerous demon. Brownderville’s poems examine a soulscape wrecked almost beyond recognition and dig deeply through the ruins.

Elegy on the Creme Drop
 
Chocolate thimbles filled
with vanilla, right there on the kitchen table—
his mother’s mother kept them around
when he was little.
Old Fashioned Creme Drops.
He loved to say
creme
drop
or only roll it
in his mind mouth. Such good words.
He didn’t know. Always
there were creme drops
on his mother’s mother’s table.
The creme drop was an oldtime sweet.
But God drove out the man
and placed at the east
Cherubims,
and a flaming sword which turned every way.
Greg Alan Brownderville, associate professor of English at Southern Methodist University, teaches creative writing and edits the Southwest Review. He has published two previous poetry books and received several awards, including fellowships and prizes from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Missouri Review, and Prairie Schooner.

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