mnLIT presents: Lynette Reini-Grandell
This week's mnLIT winner, "This Horse's Ears" by Lynette Reini-Grandell, was selected for the 2009 cycle of the What Light Poetry Project by poet Leslie Adrienne Miller.
This Horse’s Ears
are warm red
russet,
black tips,
soft hairs dark inside.
With symmetry they curve outward,
swivel inward,
end in two alert points,
twin flames of hard listening.
Humans might long for a Pentecost
with lathing tongues of fire;
this horse listens with fire,
his ears flicker at the sound of
a man chopping wood far away,
a rider breathing on his back,
a brown rabbit shivering under pines,
a miracle of listening.
This horse’s ears of fire have soft fur
smoother than sable,
they glisten like mink,
know all forms of glossolalia.
Wise men bring gifts
to these ears,
and an apple.
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About her writing, Lynette Reini-Grandell says: “To me, animals are individuals, with individual personalities, and it often shocks me when I discover that not everyone feels this way. My poetry grows out of my love of many things, including sound. Sound is central to how I perceive the world, and I have always been drawn to the sound of words, musical intervals, and other noises we use to communicate. I am a teacher, and I think much of much of my poetry arises from that teacher compulsion to draw connections and suggest possibilities. I appreciate also the way the natural world grounds me and often meditate on what it means to consider something sacred.”
About the poet: Lynette Reini-Grandell co-hosts “Write on Radio,” on KFAI, received a 2009 Intermedia Arts Writer-to-Writer Mentorship, and enjoys performing poetry at venues in the Twin Cities and around the country. She won a SASE/Ache prize for fiction and has published work in Ache, Evergreen Chronicles, and Poetry Motel. Her poems can also be found on the walls of the Carlton Arms Hotel in Manhattan, in an installation created with her husband Venus, a transgender artist and musician. She teaches English at Normandale Community College and has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
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