The Black Stallion Exposed
BY MEgan Giddings
Consider the fact that there is no way to know to truly know an animal. Consider a goldfish with its dumb glub-glub beauty. Consider that there is no way to know Greta Garbo. Re-write a Garbo movie to star a goldfish encased in a plastic bag. Allow the fish to die multiple times.
When you’re done, make a list of famous animals. What did the animals do to achieve their fame? What happened to the animals after they retired? Then imagine Garbo as stallion.
The Black Stallion as Accidental Tourist
The Black Stallion watches the ocean as the man approaches.
Footfalls: the man (still one-quarter boy, he can hear it in his weight, his breath) moves with calculated grace. Each heel-thud crunching to communicate, I am not a threat.
The horse is more interested in the water. He understands sand: how to run across it, how it feels beneath his hooves, how it feels to have a rider on top, leaned forward on his neck urging him through it, and that to get past it means oats, means green grass, a stable filled with hay and a bucket of water, cool on his snout.
He would like to offer a hoof to the waves, but is unsure of their response.
The Black Stallion Wishes for a Better Name
He has lived with the following horses: The Dream of the Desert; Spitfire; Sure Breeze; Son of Scimitar; One Thousand and Two Dreams; Lieutenant Commander; Rosetta. He would be a different horse if he wasn’t “The Black” or “The Black Stallion”. He is unsure why the name is important, but he sees himself a different, slower, less interesting horse. A life not spent in horse shoes, a life not spent fucking prestigious mare after prestigious mare in search of prestigious spawn; a life where he could understand the water’s song around him, a life where children and timid women offer him sugar cube after sugar cube.
Megan Giddings is currently a MA student in Fiction at Miami University. She has most recently been published in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review.