This is another prose poem, and it's
about a dream I had in which antidepressants
came in a hard case with little horses, live horses.
"The crowds cheered as Gloom galloped away."
"Everyone was happier, but where did the sadness go?
People wanted to know.
They didn't want it collecting in their elbows or knees then
popping up later.
The girl who thought of the ponies made a lot of money.
Now a month supply of pills came in a hard blue case
with a handle.
You opened it and found the usual vial plus six tiny ponies
of assorted shapes and sizes softly
breathing in the styrofoam.
Often, they had to be pried out and would wobble a little
when first put on the ground.
In the beginning, the children tried to play with them,
but the sharp little hooves nicked
their fingers and the ponies refused
to jump over pencil hurdles.
So the children stopped feeding them sugar water and the ponies
were left to break their legs on the gardens gravel paths
or drown in the gutters.
On the first day of the month, rats
gathered on doorsteps and spat out only the bitter manes.
Many a pony's last sight was a bounding squirrel
with its tail hovering over its head like a halo.
Behind the movie theater, the hardier ponies
gathered in packs amongst the cigarette butt's,
getting their hooves stuck in wads of gum.
They lined the hills at funerals,
huddled under folding chairs at weddings.
It became a matter of pride if one of your ponies
proved unusually sturdy.
People would smile and say, this would
have been an awful month for me, pointing to the glossy Palomino
trotting energetically around their ankles.
Eventually, the ponies were no longer needed.
People who had learned to imagine their sadness
trotting away.
And when they wanted something more tangible,
they could always go to the racetrack
and study the larger horses faces.
Gloom, number 341, with those big black eyes
was almost sure to win."