Jean ValentineThe Very Bad Horse
The very bad horse doesn't budge until the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones.
--The Buddha
My first own home my big green "bed-sit" in London, in 1956 double bed green spread sixpence coin-fed gas fire London fog huge little footsteps tok tok tok I knew three people and three more at work wrote poems knew you Life felt around in the dark for me and you picked me up by the hair four stories up and dropped me --Still I wouldn't budge.
Jean Valentine is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently The Cradle of the Real Life (Wesleyan, 2000). She teaches at Sarah Lawrence, the Graduate Writing Program at N.Y.U., and the 92nd St. Y, and lives in New York City.
photograph by Bernard Gotfryd
