The Horse Factory
by Michael Paul Workman
There is a place in Brooklyn where they used to make horses.
Saul had said with his eyes like big white halos around the word 'horses.' Izzy slid down in the backseat under piles of CD cases and He-Man toys. There was a river below us, below the car and all the other cars, below the bridge.
It was night. Below us, the river was black. Izzy slept behind me. We passed the horse factory in silence.
Izzy awoke. Her eyes were like black water swimming in white halos. She looked at the cars beside us and the river below us.
Saul, she said, let's stop ahead and pet the horses.
We got there and the horses were gone. Izzy wandered off.
I fell into the water behind the horse factory. The waves gurgled like radio static — the good kind. Here you could see the old waste had been dumped. Horse skeletons. A discorporate long jaw with the gearbox torn out. I pulled a femur from beneath a sparkling grapheme chassis, wiped off the algae and pretended to smoke it like a cigar.
"Light it up with the moon," Saul said, sliding below the surface, but not drowning at all, his eyes open and aware like little bugs or squids.
But the moon was black — that is, there seemed to be no moon at all.
Saul swam wearing the horse skeleton. Izzy wandered into the backseats.
Some night for a horse skeleton.
The discorporate eyes of Brooklyn.
Michael Paul Workman lives in Phoenix, Arizona.