Adam Horovitz
Wile E. Coyote Pauses for Thought
All these unthinking technocratic years
shooting myself from giant rubber bands
and pawing vitamins
–the kind that build your limbs
into flexible hillsides–
down my ravenous throat
and here I still am,
a blurring swarm of legs
scrabbling at molecules of air,
waiting for the river-rush of sun-red stone.
Nature has its favourite ways of saying No:
earthquake; tsunami; volcano.
The acme of That’s all folks!
But I’ve encountered subtler signs.
Now, I am certain
that the cliff face, not the bird,
opens up the tunnels
I can’t run through;
that boulders shift and twitch into my way
as the desert dreams of my defeat.
There is a lesson to be learned,
which does not fit onto the tiny signs
I use to whisper my goodbyes
before becoming yet another
distant puff of canyon smoke.
I must remember that I am a machine,
the pinnacle of pursuit,
must temper my reliance on things other than myself.
No more exploding birdseed, no more backfiring guns.
I must become what I pursue.
This time, as I fall, I’ll yell Meep Meep.
Bio
Adam Horovitz is a Stroud-based poet, performer and editor. His first full collection Turning (Headland, 2011) was followed by A Thousand Laurie Lees (History Press, 2014) and Little Metropolis (a CD of poetry and music commissioned by the Stroud Fringe Festival in 2015). He is one of Ledbury Poetry Festival’s Versopolis poets, and was poet in residence for Herefordshire and the Pasture-fed Livestock Association. His second full collection of poems, The Soil Never Sleeps, was released in a second extended edition in 2019. He co-presents The Thunder Mutters, a poetry and music podcast, and is one of 10 poets appearing on Cerys Matthews and The Hidden Orchestra’s album We Come From the Sun (2021). His next book, Love and Other Fairy Tales, will also be released in 2021, by Indigo Dreams Publications.
Twitter: @adamhorovitz
Instagram: @adam.horovitz
