Horse Piano
The idea is to get a horse, a Central park workhorse.
A horse who lives in a city, over in the hell part of Hell’s Kitchen, in a big metal tent.
You have to get one who is dying.
Maybe you get his last day on the job, his owner, his tourists.
You get his walk back home at the end of the day,
some flies, some droll. You get his deathbed, maybe.
And then, post mortem, still warm, you get the vet or else the butcher
to take his three best legs. And then you get the taxidermist to stuff them
heavy, with some alloy, steel, something.
Next day you go over to Christie’s interiors sale and buy a baby-grand piano,
shabby condition but tony provenance, let’s say it graced the entry hall
of some or other Vanderbilt’s Gold Coast classic six.
And you ask the welder you know to carefully replace the piano legs
with horse legs, and you put the horse/piano somewhere like a lobby,
and you hire a guy to play it on the hour, so that everybody will know
how much work it is to hold anything up in this world.
- Anna McDonald
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you like this part, right: stuff it/heavy
and: the vet or else the butcher
and: the hell part of Hell’s Kitchen
I myself probably would have just said “replace”, instead of “carefully replace”, but other than that, wish all the words where mine
a friend of aaron’s wrote it. can you believe just on August 31st and it’s already published! she sent aaron a handkerchief after his accident. she’s an artist, you see. a classy one at that.
