The Dean of the University said
the neighborhood people could not cross campus
until the students gave up the buildings
so we lay down in the street,
we said The cops will enter this gate
over our bodies. Spine-down on the cobbles--
hard bed, like a carton of eggs--
I saw the buildings of New York City
from dirt level, they soared up and stopped,
chopped off cleanly--beyond them the sky
black and neither sour nor sweet, the
night air over the island.
The mounted police moved near us
delicately. Flat out on our backs
we sang, and then I began to count,
12, 13, 14, 15, I
counted again, 15, 16, one
month since the day on that deserted beach when we
used nothing, 17, 18, my
mouth fell open, my hair in the soil,
if my period did not come tonight
I was pregnant. I looked up at the sole of the
cop's shoe, I looked up at the
horse's belly, it's genitals--if they
took me to Women's Detention and did the
exam on me, jammed the unwashed
speculum high inside me, the guard's
three fingers--supine on Broadway, I looked
up into the horse's tail like a
dark filthed comet. All week, I had
wanted to get arrested, long to
give myself away. I lay in the
tar, one brain in my head and another
tiny brain at the base of my tail and I
stared at the world, good-luck iron
arc of the gelding's shoe, the cop's
baton, the deep curve of the animal's
belly, the buildings streaming up
away from the earth. I knew I should get up and
leave, stand up to muzzle level, to the
height of the soft velvet nostrils and
walk away, turn my back on my
friends and danger, but I was a coward so I
lay there looking up at the sky,
black vault arched above us, I
lay there gazing up at God, at his
underbelly, till it turned deep blue and then
silvery, colorless, Give me this one
night, I said, and I'll give this child
the rest of my life, the horses' heads
drooping, dipping, until they slept in a
dark circle around my body and my daughter.