A Gift Horse

By TIMOTHY LIU

Her hands kept on
working their way

into my pants even

after the wedding
toast—the evening

merely an excuse

for a gift horse
crashing through

the stables of a barn

a midget had set
on fire, my mother

clothed in nothing

but safety matches
struck on her teeth

as she colored in

my moon with pieces
of broken chalk—

 

[Purchase Issue 12 here.]

Timothy Liu’s most recent book of poems is Don’t Go Back to Sleep. He met his husband-to-be while sprawled out drunk on Dickinson’s grave more than two decades back. And that has made all the difference.

 

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

A Gift Horse

Related Posts

Cover of All Is The Telling by Rosa Castellano

An Embodied Sense of Time: Raychelle Heath Interviews Rosa Castellano

ROSA CASTELLANO
I’m holding a blank page all the time for myself. That’s a truth that I choose to believe in: the blank page is a tool for our collective liberation. It can be how we keep going. I love that we can find each other on the page and heal each other, too. So, I invoke that again and again, for myself, because I need it.

Cloudy sunset over field.

Florida Poems

EDWARD SAMBRANO III
I will die in Portland on an overcast day, / The Willamette River mirroring clouds’ / Bleak forecast and strangers not forgetting— / Not this time—designer raincoats in their closets. / They will leave for work barely in time / To catch their railcars. It will happen / On a day like today.