Golden Horses

The Hunt - Linda Liang

Imagining Retreat - Joey Chin

10. You admit nothing, I deny everything.
You are a man.
I am just pretending.

9.
What were those drawings?
Is that your form of communication with me?
Or is that how you make
sense?

8.
Your pencil lines are precise but
scaled
to your terms,
I am lost in them.

7.
It was in the early 2000s.
Our concerns were parallel.
We were worried;
you about a promotion,
I about graduation,
both which happened.
Thereafter we became
parallel.

6.
Recently I told you the difference between
attention and actuality.
how it was idea of you I loved.
You said,
“It’s like masturbation. Geographically, emotionally removed.”

5.
Love is astringent.
To purify, you must first
hurt.

4.
I asked you about dreams.
You thought I meant desires.
I was refering to the REM kind.
I dreamt about you once,
you were going to be
a father.
I remember trying hard to stay awake for a long time
if dreams were going to betray me like this.

3.
We laughed,
but only I cried.

2.
I have not caught up with
the age you were when we met.
I am always behind,
the minute hand,
the ragged shadow.

1.
I want to know which of the above I can tell
without,
before you retreat.


***

Joey writes poetry mostly on gender roles, migration and diaspora and tourism.
She enjoys Nazim Hikmet, Charles Bukowski and Pablo Neruda, to name a few.
You can find her at www.joettte.blogspot.com since she does not have Facebook or Tumblr.

Paradox - Michael Soltero

it’s better to make lists,
you told me, citing those old poems
about the end of numbers,
the beginning of time, the tall oaks-
white bearded and drunk,
gazing at the stars.

i pointed out
the troublesome hum of machinery
which haunts all houses
(previously we had only heard
the mad howling of ink on paper
and the wind outside growling)

you said it’s the furnace’s fire
dying out, it’s the moon screaming,
it’s us trying to fit in
while belonging nowhere,
never meant to be.

i stopped you with a question mark,
eyes wide.
what about the sound of blade on skin?
time is a joke,
god hates the sun
and nothing is ever lost.

***

Michael is a poet and warehouse worker from Las Vegas, NV. Visit his tumblr.

i am certain this is something you do not know - Regina Green

the symbol for cat is two hands behind your back
the symbol for too much sugar in the coffee is one step
slowly to the right
the symbol for i want to spend the rest of my life with you
starts in the collection of favorite cowboys of the old west
and i nearly lost myself there
i fell behind a tumbleweed
i think that’s what they call them
the symbol for help is more complicated and would take
a day or two to explain
the symbol for going to sleep is the normal eyes
closing

***

Regina Green is a poet and therapist living outside of Atlanta, GA. You can find more of her poetry at livejournal and blogspot.

Love is All - Suzanne Highland

From buildings painted grey and blue like wedding spoons,

we fell out like teeth. How desperate of it to stick, to become 

the aftertaste of itself, this love. The dog wags himself out 
of your daughter’s arms. We holed up with boxes, without hangups, 

putting the animal down. We let eyelet curtains turn to ghosts. 
In the old movies, someone smiled wide through their tears

and was received like a parade of pageant girls. But we just cry, 
inglorious, ever the picture you never noticed in the living room.

The slogan of lovers is briefly debated. Stage fright, someone says, 
nailing their hand to the wall. Forgiveness, says another. 

And there is a pause. It is enough. Pages curl away into nothing, 
you hold onto your breath and my coat. There is a pause. It is. 

***

Suzanne is a poet from Florida. She received her BA in Creative Writing from Florida State University in 2011, under the tutelage of Erin Belieu and Robert Olen Butler, and has been living and writing in Buenos Aires, Argentina ever since. Her blog can be found at aprettywar.tumblr.com and her nonfiction travel blog at bbbaires.tumblr.com.

The Last - Riley Richards

Color is critical. It fades in and out. 
Arms lose their strength. Bodies lose body.
I crack my teeth on stones and draw blood.
I hear voices burn. The city hunts us. We fight it with noise.
My nerves howl and rattle their bars.
Bravery screams, “Where did the world go
when our fathers lost their youth? I will not give it up.
Not until my hands rot from wanting.”

***

Riley is a third-year student at Amherst College.  He is majoring in music and pre-med.

I Would Like to Have a Bird in My Throat - Beth Kellmurray

I would like to have a bird in my throat.
Perhaps a dove, or a robin,
one with that rusty orange chest.
It would sing you the words;
tell you we are pretty little accidents,
like when your stubble scraped against my cheek
when you leaned in to say happy New Year.
Like the apology that followed for the clumsiness.
Like the curtains that didn’t keep morning out;
the leg that pulled all the sheets to one corner.
The song would come from the bird’s tiny chest
and tell you that this is all okay.
But you cut it from my throat,
pluck it of all its feathers until it is naked,
standing before us with nothing
but its shame.
The cat drags it to the doorstep—
a peace offering for the mistakes made,
but the stench still lingers.

***

I am a recent English grad. Readers can find me at my Tumblr, Twitter and Blogspot.

That One Time - Rayven

that one time
you asked me to come home with you
because you were going to the hospital the next day
and you didn’t want to be alone

and i didn’t want to see you cry one more time

so i let you go
and i hope that you were okay
but i don’t think so

and the summer that you melted away
your room full of smoke but no noise
and i ate my sardines and rehearsed my eulogy
to you

llittle girls
should not
have to write 

anything

Waves by Caroline Gormley

I have fused my many lives into one; (for all deaths are one death)

the shadows of ships are not a ship.

I said that nothing should be irrelevant.

My past is cut from what poses shall not destroy me.

For this moment, this one rare glance, we are together.

I press you to me. I indent my name. 

The rooms where we sat stream away like leaves, 

water running down gutters, green depths facing me eyeless 

at the end of the eternal procession, 

migrating east, west, north and south;

How strange to oar’s one way. 

You shall remain here, no shadow made of quivering leaves; 

exist here and now and not in streaks and patches, 

one thousand eyes of curiosity do not see us.

Let me look. 

Chaos, detail, return. I am no longer amazed by names.

But you exist somewhere. Here are pictures. 

It gets later and later. He has forgotten. 

He is these white sheets

what is abstract, always in your presence, from this table, these lights,

these pilgrimages, these moments of departure, start some

little language

such as lovers use, as if it were a fact. 

I remember the narrow streets, with our hands on the cold known territory, this forest of the unknown world alight.

The machine then works; I note the rhythm, the I, and again I, and again I.

***

Caroline is a poet living in Brooklyn. 

You Are Welcome - Tracy Wan

For you are diaphanous, your eyes
translucent and your pages thin
the body smoothed between you
and the cold stone, saying come
and come again

For the day is open, wide avenues still
in the recreation of dawn, a cell
of light blossoming manhattan
into a island myth

For I am ragged against the current
kicking less with each breath
not bending my legs

For this silence is a shroud
and the sands shifting beneath
fold in the same direction

For vertigo and the fear of desire
to be caught on something

For recognition: the water in you
or yourself in the water 

***

Tracy Wan can be found on tumblr at tracywan.tumblr.com. Stephanie is a huge fan.