Midsummer Dream House

 

Anxiety Sounds Like a Whinny

“When a horse is at full gallop,
there is a moment when all four hooves
are off the ground.
Eadweard Muybridge won a bet by figuring
that fact out, setting up dozens of cameras
and tripwires to go off
when a horse galloped down a road.
This helped kickstart a new art form in the process.”

I hope that counts as something
you don’t know. When you asked me to
tell you something you don’t know,
that fact was the first to come to mind.
I’ve never ridden a horse, nor have I ever
made a movie that wasn’t filmed on a smartphone,
but I’d like to think I enlightened you
further by telling you that.

Maybe it had nothing to do with
our conversation up until this point,
but I hope that it revealed something about me
to you that you never picked up on before.

Maybe I know more about horses or
19th-century photography or early cinema.
Maybe all the afternoons I spent prowling
Wikipedia after school instead of joining clubs
or making friends would at least
extend the length of our conversation here.

You say to me,

“Ok? Wouldn’t that be the same for a human as well?”

I remain in place,
my hand wrinkling from the condensation
on my glass. You stare at me and
wait for a response. I try to visualize what
it looks like when someone’s running.
You could probably set trip wires and cameras
of Usain Bolt running and get the same result.
You continue to look at me while
I construct the film in my head.

Should I tell you about this visual,
or do you want another fact?
Or do you want me to go away
so you can talk to someone more interesting?

I can do both.
Tell me what you want me to do.
Or rather, tell me,
because I don’t know what to do.

After Ada Limón

 

Poetry by Alex Carrigan

 

 

Alex Carrigan (he/him) is a Pushcart-nominated editor, poet, and critic from Alexandria, VA. He is the author of Now Let’s Get Brunch: A Collection of RuPaul’s Drag Race Twitter Poetry (Querencia Press, 2023) and May All Our Pain Be Champagne: A Collection of Real Housewives Twitter Poetry (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He has appeared in The Broadkill Review, Sage Cigarettes, Barrelhouse, Fifth Wheel Press, Cutbow Quarterly, and more. Visit carriganak.wordpress.com or follow him on Twitter @carriganak for more info.