On the windblown rind of Easter Island, I ride a lean pony named Flaco, even as I ride the metro from Alma to Filles du Calvaire. The tunnel’s coal stench, the train’s borborygmus, revisit rocks of salt and lava. Far below, the pelagic blue tows my horse’s greed for cliff-growing dandelions. Rongorongo, all ours, barely keeps out an ocean tasseled with frigate wings. I sit by my horse, holding the rope reins against his fall. A stout sky, sheared by screeching and moon’s pale scythe, makes me miss my stop.
Stephanie V. Sears is a French and American ethnologist (Doctorate EHESS, Paris), freelance journalist, essayist and poet. She was shortlisted in 2009 for a Pushcart Prize. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Deronda Review, The Comstock Review, The Mystic Blue Review, The Big Windows Review, Indefinite Space, The Plum Tree Tavern, Literary Yard, Clementine Unbound, Anti Heroine Chic, DASH, The Dawn Treader, Dodging the Rain, Amethyst Review, The Non-Conformist Magazine, and SORTES. Her first book of poetry, The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson, was published by Adelaide Books in 2020.