“Weights and Measures” by Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10)

An excerpt from “Weights and Measures” by Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) published at Shenandoah Literary:

Weights and Measures

The racehorse crossing the line shining clean because he never had to see another step in front of him, kicking back mud, who the viewers never for a moment had to consider in a position that wasn’t first—that’s how he thought of himself. I always came out ahead, he said.My grandfather, who we are burying. In one-hundred-degree heat, the flowers sagging, sweat stains swagging the underarms of every shirt, logging trucks thundering by on the highway, waving their scrappy flags, not of triumph, on oversized loads of felled trees.Not in seconds, feet, or furlongs—by any measure others share—would he have been determined a victor. But he would have fixed his eyes on the proud parts of the day with the focus of the honor guard come to give the military salute, firing guns in unison, folding the flag from his casket crisply, with a ceremony of utter certainty. The confidence with which some move through the world (particularly men, white, of a certain generation)… I am uncomfortable in the most basic element of existence, my flesh my dress bunches against. But he fought hard to stay in his skin, no matter how it wizened.For some horses, who do have mud flung in their eyes, it is a mercy, in that it blinds them to their place, to the finish ahead. We lower his body into the red clay. […continue reading here]