after Christopher Gilbert
I forget the night the horse was born whole
and sprinting out from its mother
as if she were a burning barn
I forget I was a human daughter then
with a salt lick in my palm
the beast mistook for moon
I forget how grandmother was chased
around the earth by a bad spirit bent
on killing her girl-children during birth
I forget I made it here because she lived
they all lived out-lived husbands
widowed hooves thrown into wind so strong
I forget it Like I did their maiden names
I ask for them now to begin
calling to my future children who
I forget would then be named
after a distant flock
of fathers and husbands that
I forget on purpose How far back
do I have to go to find
a mother’s true name where no one ever uttered
“I forgot her” after it?
Farther than where our common ancestor
with horses lived?
I forget how far for me
isn’t far at all for the legs of horses
or for seeds salt soil mountains ice
I forget at one point
we were family with everything
Birth being a molten bubble in the sea
I forget mother was once the only name
for a home that had to be on fire
to be had at all

Shelby Handler is a writer and educator living on Duwamish territory/Seattle, WA. They are a 2020 Richard Hugo House fellow and incoming MFA candidate at the University of Washington. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, PANK, Sugar House Review, The Journal, Gigantic Sequins, among others. Follow them @shelbeleh.