Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Language Of Horses, Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley

Advance Praise for The Language of Horses "These living, breathing poems woo us...and we happily succumb to their charms."

-Dorothy Sutton, author of Backing into Mountains and Startling Art: Darwin and Matisse

"Here, among mountains and cornfields, stables and laboratories, are compelling human tongues: mother, father, daughters, lovers. The Language of Horses, in Hensley's fertile imagination and deft hands, is indeed 'the language of life rising.'"

-Libby Falk Jones, author of Above the Eastern Hilltops, Blue

"Like the scents of haymows and meadows, these poems of longing carry the reader back to an idyllic childhood in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, …

Expecting, Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley

Cora As soon as your brother-in-law gives you word, you begin making the room ready. One of the upstairs bedrooms. The one with the east facing window. The room that was never filled.

You paint the walls a pale lilac. Elden and one of the farmhands drag an old iron bed in from the storage room in the barn. You sand off the rust and paint it white. You hang sheer curtains and spread a bright quilt—one of dozens your grandmother made over the years—across the bed. As a final touch, you add an antique vanity—a splurge purchase—with flowering vines …

Viable (A Letter Confessing My Own Lack Of Faith To My Newborn Son), Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley

Last January, in the minute and a half it took the ultrasound technician to pronounce that word, hours after I stood up from the sofa and felt the blood rush warm out of me, I thought about the moments when knowledge of your life was mine alone, when I had sat, heart-pounding, holding the confirmation of your presence inside me, frozen, unable or unwilling, to rise and begin the inevitable process of sharing you.

Bajada, Julie Hensley

Julie Hensley

After six months, I drove back to the desert like a lover. December. In the wake of a slow, winter rain. Week-old grass curled back into the sand like the golden fur of some sleeping animal.