The Beauty of the Disgusting

This one hit me first in high school, a time when I was both aflame with hormones and terrified of sex. The description of a horse's reproductive organs can still simultaneously repulse and fascinate me.

On an Old Advertisement and After a Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Alan Dugan

The formal, blooded stallion, the Arabian,

will stand for stud at fifty bucks a throw,

but there is naturally a richer commerce in his act,

eased in this instance by a human palm

and greased with money: the quiver in his haunch

is not from flies, no; the hollow-sounding,

kitten-crushing hooves are sharp and blind,

the hind ones hunting purchase while the fore

rake at the mare's flank of the sky.

Also, the two- or three-foot prick that curls

the mare's lip back in solar ectasy

is greater than the sum of its desiring:

the great helm of the glans, the head

of feeling in the dark, is what spits out,

beyond itself, its rankly generative cream.

After that heat, the scraggled, stallion-legged foal

is not as foolish as his acts: the bucking and

the splayed-out forelegs while at grass

are practices: he runs along her flank

in felt emergencies, inspired by love to be

his own sweet profit of the fee and the desire,

compounded at more interest than the fifty in the bank.

I'm not sure if this is the photograph referred to in the title, but thought I'd provide it anyway.

Along the same lines as the poem I think of "Equus," the incredible play by Peter Shaffer that similarly combines the glory and the ickiness of equine sexuality. (Incidentally, Anthony Shaffer, his brother wrote screenplays including "The Wicker Man." That must be one twisted family.)

To this day I'm creeped out by the poem. But I also can't stop reading it. And that's what disturbs me most.