Six White Horses

by Melita Schaum

Their necks are like swans, like white scythes slicing the tinny circus
light. Their manes are flames of snow, and on their backs a woman
sequened like a barroom sign, her red suit a splash of grenadine on
ice.

But my friend the painter needs more China white, more carnelian for
this canvas. The lady has to be redder, she frowns. And these haunches
are the color of softballs.

Her mother died last month, and she is angry. In the studio lights her
eyes look bruised. She is the girl the color of blood on hospital
sheets, the girl the color of a valentine, riding her bridled rage
around and around.

Down in the alley an old black man quenches his pain on the golden
stamen of a sax. The notes land like fists against time's body; they
empty death's pockets.

My mother used to sing like that, before she let herself get old. I
hear her voice rise in the purpling dusk, a sound as pure as fingers
spinning crystal. I am eighteen again, bright with desire, bracing
myself against the cantering white curve of years.

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