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Barbara Hamby: Trigger Tries To Explain
Aw, Dale, he didn’t mean it when he said I was the
best thing that ever happened to him. If he even said it,
chalk it up to the RKO publicity machine. I’m a horse, a
dead one at that, mounted in the museum with glass
eyes and looking a little ratty as the tubby former fans
file by with their bewildered bored kids, who are thinking,
Golden palomino, my ass, I can’t believe he brought us
here instead of Disneyland, the boys looking like overgrown
insects and the girls like prostitutes in their halter tops,
jean short-shorts and platform sandals. It would have
killed Roy to see them, being such a goody-goody, always
Leonard Slye just beneath the skin with his Oklahoma homilies,
making everyone feel safe and sound. Oh, sure the big bad
Nazis were gone, but there were plenty of villains:
on the left the Commies, on the right the McCarthyites.
Poor Dale, you had a horse, too, what was her name? You were
Queen of the West until you gained a hundred pounds on fried
rashers, doughnuts, Wonder bread, and bakery cakes. Okay,
so it couldn’t last forever. Get over it, Trigger, I tell myself,
television is fickle. Now it’s hospital shows, blood and angst
undercut with tawdry sex. I blame the French, frigging cinema
verité. Where’s the story, the hero, the beautiful girl?
Where’s the horse? The other dead horses say, Whoa, don’t get
excited, Trigger. Nothing’s the way it was. That’s the truth. Ah,
youth, I try not to be bitter, but sometimes I dream about
Zorro, now there was a guy who could make a horse look good.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and the University of Pittsburgh Press
Barbara Hamby is the author of many collections of poetry. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.
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A flipping blueish-joy to read, Barbara. Brava!
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I have countless photos…will send one “under separate cover,” not for publication but for when you need a good, long laugh!
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Thanks, Louise!
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Forgot to send those Happy Trails shots. Did that today…8/17/25
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Oh, my, thank you, Barbara; you brought home fun memories (1940s): I got to be Dale Evans when I played with the boys, even had a gun and a horse Buttermilk! The highlight of my early days was seeing Roy, Dale, and Trigger at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD (where was Buttermilk???) I’m glad I saw Trigger before he became a stuffed spectacle!
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To this day, my whole family (including teenage floozies in halter tops and short shorts) always forms a high-kicking chorus line to sing visitors off with a rousing rendition of “Happy Trails to You.”
Thanks for the memories, Barbara!
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Hahahaha. I’d like to see that!
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It takes a horse (of course) to take down the myth of the white hat from A to Z.
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And a horse of a different color!
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Along with her being an “Abecedarian-master,” Barbara has Zorro to thank for bringing this one off, though she would have found a different Zed to end the show, had he never been.
I never saw those 1950s “oaters” through any political lens; I was in my aughts, and my big wonder then was why the horse got called Trigger, and the dog named Bullet. What did those two animals have to do with guns? Maybe we should let Bullet explain.
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Roy Rogers was a big part of the mythology of my childhood. I had a hat, chaps with fringes, a six shooter and little brothers to shoot at. We watched Roy and Dale’s show every afternoon.
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I too had my cap gun, and my naugahyde horsehead on a stick I rode around with Bubba and Bruce, my neighbors. The three little buckaroos. Then I saw Annette Funicello on the Mickey Mouse Club, and my interest in the cap gun waned.
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Oh yes, we were all in love with Annette!
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Totally satisfying. And plastering a big grin on my face. And leaving me gobsmacked. Wow!
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Yes, each of Barbara’s poems encompasses a whole world. Humor, tragedy, weirdness and decency, all wrapped in a musical form. Amazing.
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And allow me to add a bravo too! How does she DO it?!! Hello and my Monday morning awe, Barbara!
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Aye, brava!
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Abecedarian-master Barbara Hamby does it again! I didn’t see the alphabetical order until close to the end of this stunning poem. Kudos!
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Barbara is brilliant, isn’t she?
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As ever, I love it. Only hesitation? Leonard came from Ohio, not Oklahoma. Bravissima!Sent from my iPhone
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Thanks, Syd!
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This might now be one of my favorite Barbara Hamby oeuvres. Talk about “trigger warnings!” A proper take down of the whole American ethos, its obsession with stardom and villains,and dead or stuffed, its hollywood burnished wannabes… equine or human… Thank you ms. Hamby for the cynicism and irony. Indeed, nothing is the way it was…and the present has enough untruths to fill a museum of horrors. Brava. :))
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Brava to you, Margo, for your wild and brave imagination.
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