This happened to Malcolm

My sister Hadley hosed green stuff off the ***.

When she squirted my ear I ****** the neck rope. Her skin was hurt so

The horse folded back her lips and bit my thigh with brown yellow teeth.

I was thirteen. I locked myself in the bathroom.

I felt ***** as a smug prayer for running. Mom said,

“Come back out. Don’t get left behind.” My dad had run away.

I splashed my face cold and put on my jeans. I hustled out. Not for my mother.

Scottie was a Brock University girl from PEI who cut and doctored hooves and skin

And shod horses and filed their teeth. You could smell teeth filings and Stockholm tar

And when I went back to the head she held my face

A long time in her hands and said I knew you were a straight arrow.

That might have scared my mom.

That was the first time I ever did it with anyone.




Paul Anthony Hutchinson