from Horse Boy
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
Why not a planet of horse-boys?
why not a planet where deadlast
is medal not shame : where tame is relation
not solid-state and if I eat out of your hand
you must stay. I don’t make the rules—you don’t,
either. Seems no one ever has and everyone just, eager,
folds to knee. I must pin a star in this poem somewhere,
is a rule. Moon, planet : bodies on which bodies
live. Double entendre is false speech.
So I eat out of your hand. You almost stay.
That story of the fox
begging to be tamed? I don’t believe it. A story is
false speech
You come you go that also is false
Speak. Your hand, given forward,
means I have tamed you. Or
means I have tamed you. Speech is false speech
Tongue in my head and tongue
upon your hand. I make you
a rule: your knees are unfalse and mine. If you go
to them you
will come to me. You are lucky to have occurred thrice
Twice oats in your hand then your jaw in mine
Yours is the body on which I am a body
ruth tang writes performance texts & poetry & makes weird internet experiments. They grew up in Singapore and presently live in Brooklyn, NY.
