How Grivas of the Blue Horse Gave Way

by Holly Karapetkova

Once when the king came looking
I called him a bastard, spat
in the dirt, strapped my weapons on
and rode my blue horse.
My hair was as black as a curse.

But the autumn came
the leaves turned bitter
and the soil laid out its poison.

Now my hair is gray.
The king will find me at home
confessing my sins to the priest:
thirty years a rebel, twenty a thief.
All I ask is a coffin tall enough to stand
wide enough to load my gun
and on the right side leave a window
so that the swallows will come
driving the spring
driving my blue horse home.

Holly Karapetkova recently completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati and is now teaching at Coastal Carolina University in South Carolina. Her poems and translations have appeared in a number of journals, including The Crab Orchard Review, The Formalist, and The Marlboro Review. The three poems in this issue are part of a longer sequence, “Songs from the Karakachani,” based loosely based on the songs and oral folklore of the Karakachani, a nomadic tribe located in regions of Bulgaria and Northern Greece that has all but been destroyed by contemporary borders and governments.