Horse-Boy
These poems are for a horse-boy. Perhaps one day he will be my horse-boy. I do not like boys. I cannot love boys. Still, I think of these as love poems – for a boy, half horse half man, who I may one day meet. The horse-boy is a story; he is a lie; he is a fantasy, a half-truth, a warning. So I have made him into poems. Look: the poem eats apples out of your hand.
Finalist for BOMB Magazine’s Poetry Contest 2018
excerpt:
Horse-boy, you wandered into this poem and you can stay
After all I have nothing left but you you, my hands, half a boat
I am usually more of a narrative than this but when you came well
I am a parental advisory in other words a life with footnotes
As a child you dropped your head: I was dropped on mine: both of us survived this word order
Is your mouth a mouth of horses or a mouth of boys
When you ride : are ridden : which is fucking and which is transport
In your childhood from which end did your life grow? Mine from both ends
I could not stop it until everywhere became a where I was touched
My own body, my own
Half a boat carries half a person well
Bathos is cowardice but so is alternate rhyme so is love once you let it talk back
My body and I have an understanding
It has only to do with your hands
Only love is saying, half a boat half a boat your hands, my ends everywhere they do not touch I will grow
Horse-boy, you wandered into this poem and you can stay
After all I have nothing left but you you, my hands, half a boat
I am usually more of a narrative than this but when you came well
I am a parental advisory in other words a life with footnotes
As a child you dropped your head: I was dropped on mine: both of us survived this word order
Is your mouth a mouth of horses or a mouth of boys
When you ride : are ridden : which is fucking and which is transport
In your childhood from which end did your life grow? Mine from both ends
I could not stop it until everywhere became a where I was touched
My own body, my own
Half a boat carries half a person well
Bathos is cowardice but so is alternate rhyme so is love once you let it talk back
My body and I have an understanding
It has only to do with your hands
Only love is saying, half a boat half a boat your hands, my ends everywhere they do not touch I will grow