The Death of a Horse

Essay

Hooves like walnuts

How the hell did we get here?

I envision a golden thread from my skull down to the earth’s core

“Everything you do now, makes a difference later,” David instructs me, looking down the barrel of another Bud Light. I walk Paloma into the yard. Her warm cheek presses against my knuckles. I pat her neck. David pops open another can and stands akimbo, watching over the ranch. I feel a connection to Paloma at one moment, but then she bites my shirt. Her large, yellowing eye dilates in fright. I pull away. “Are you sure it’s good to go?” “Yes… ” “Check the saddle.” I check the saddle. One of the pad’s edges was improperly tucked under the stirrup. “Was there a mistake?” “No,” I lie, stepping back to Paloma. She kicks the ground a few times as David ruminates on new legal efforts to curb lead contamination from a nearby battery smelter. He references the cumulative impacts from the 60 and 605 freeways, as well as the City of Industry broadly. I breathe in the dust, trying to ignore the probable selenium bath in my lungs. “Groundwork,” David announces. “Everything you do in preparation …

Remedies

Elderberry

Hobbit remedy shortens colds, relieves sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever; may neutralize the venom of serpents

The expressed juice of the berries is a valuable aperient and alterative

J.K. Rowling used elder wood to make wands, just as Prometheus used it to bring fire down from Mt. Olympus and the Romans used it to crucify the Christ

By Amanda Fortini

I was in a Walgreens browsing the supplements aisle, as I am wont to do, loitering among the zinc lozenges and nasal sprays. It was a late fall night in 2017: The flu season that year was especially severe — a scarily virulent strain, the news kept warning — and would end up being one of the deadliest on record. I was alone in Las Vegas, teaching college journalism and reporting on the mass shooting that had happened there a mere six weeks before. It was one of the bleaker and more arduous periods of my life. Everything felt dull and pedestrian, devoid of those occasional glimpses of sparkle and magic that keep one trudging on. In the evenings, after grading papers in my ugly carpeted apartment, I’d inevitably grow bored of the cable television offerings and decide to entertain myself by roaming around the forlorn Walgreens across the street from my apartment complex. It was there, at the most depressing Walgreens in existence — I once saw a man buy 11 boxes of Raisin Bran, 9 tins of …

The Death of a Horse

Critic's Corner

Elderberry