Mark Time Poem by Sarah Vap

Sequence of horses—negatives of actual geldings
foundering near the aqueduct. Clinical, and pastoral.
Sick horses swim out for China

but it's a performance. And it always fails. They're opposed,
the geldings, to cowboys.

Secret gelding speech—something far inside them
beckoning to deer for comfort.
The horses are pristine, with no end. Stallions cakewalk
with other stallions

to choose which. The foamiest horses let
their riders off. Just let everyone be.
Let anyone bring
their lines to the lake and the horses don't swim past.

Instead they disguise, literally disguise
each other because the runners know that comparison
is violent. Then
buckers watch the geyser become a conceit.