One of the most enriching, forward-thinking, fastest-growing online creative communities flourishing right now is the Poetry community, especially in those scenes that center on marginalized voices — Women, POC, Neurodivergent, and LGBTQ. Poetry Spotlight is a feature aiming to showcase the work of some of the most talented creators we’ve discovered making waves on the Internet literary circles, inside or outside the mainstream. Our twelfth installment is dedicated to the poetry of Rosebud Ben-Oni.
Rosebud is a recipient of the 2014 NYFA Fellowship in Poetry and a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow; her most recent collection of poems, turn around, BRXGHT XYXS, was selected as Agape Editions’ EDITORS’ CHOICE, and will be published in 2019. She writes weekly for The Kenyon Review blog and is an Editorial Advisor for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her work appears or is forthcoming in POETRY, The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Black Warrior Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Arts & Letters, among others; recently, her poem “Poet Wrestling with Angels in the Dark” was commissioned by the National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City, and published by The Kenyon Review Online. She teaches creative writing at UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program. Find her at 7TrainLove.org
Poet Wrestling with Rick & Morty But Mostly Rick
(Originally published in The Mississippi Review)
It’s all about the heart they say— that cross, that shine
to compromise. Either you are creator or you die
on some pagan holiday. Most everything we get
twisted. Most everything is either science or shockwave
of endless favor. The asking. The ridiculous heart getting lit
on blood that never dries on marked doors
of unrequited sin. Who do you think you are. I’ve wed
my own body vermillion.
Blushing & brickish electric-
plush,
these organs. Make my spleen a shrine
to excess. Who doesn’t have time
for infinite timelines? Is not your greatest fear
unity, that horse I am eternally
breaking? Is that a new dress? Try the heart
you left
to grey & shiver in crawl
-space,
{false heart} floating through
failing body. Same heart spoiling
other hearts sulfuric &
weed-whack.
How they beat
beneath the changing of horses. Either love yourself or trust
a woman who changes doorposts & signs to unidentified
equine.
Either are or
return to sender. You say the aim of being
you is {being you} & creation alone {is the favor}—
when all language will always escape & betray
its creator. You don’t know what you are saying
of infinite pain. Please help me. Either horses change
to natural disasters or frozen ground heeds
the silence of its ruins. Now it’s time to walk.
Wipe your face
off with pure glycerin
& sage.
Creation is a spell
of double negation.
FROM The Last Great Adventure Is You
(Originally published in Black Warrior Review)
horses on the internet are like no way
the night in the steam of the geyser was your gaze
(like the horse in the steam of the city was
my name) & horses that spring from my macbook are just
ok when in the cities there are horses of hot springs
(hanging with horses you’ve never seen)
I’ve been hanging with some horses you never seen before
& the streets keep asking what does all this mean
that all horses lead
to a heart that sings
the fire & why all hearts
slingshot
into the wild & is my heart
a horse
leading
& the streets call out king me
a world barren as fresh tarmac I’m melting
nailed metal on your feet (where I used to be)
& far from the highlands a storm is always breaking
apart bales & bales of horses pretending
while horses on the internet are calling
out I am the only
(natural law would I sing)
unfurling horses from scalding springs
& will it be just another day
when you wash up on cold city shores & feign
repentance for the horns
(of feigned horses you severed
& ate) & how many horses will spring
an engine & not an empty
seat & the gate it’s not like
the end when they say in ten minutes
not just another night in your mane (starless
& sealed)
how many more horses will it take
ever since (I
left) the highlands {{you}}
*
To the hundred horses I awaken in your arms
& to the forget-me-forget-me
-nots which run
a hundred horses
hot how they keep us
one hundred
horse-in-arms
& to those hundreds who escape
the slaughterstones with a taste
for rage
& blood there’s no telling
how old the hundreds
really are no
telling for how long
we must tend to a hundred vacant lots
where succulents fan their swords
kittle
& odd
& to the hundred horseshoes
where aloe blooms
braying
& toothed hundreds
& hundreds of biting
that soothes
until we’re one hundred enough
to raid horses of lost youth
a hundred holy bejeweled
horsearks we
crash into
just to hear
a hundred times
too soon
& too dear
& to the thousands of horses I awaken
to the power of a thousand
falling down ferocious
in a pit of your arms
the thousand moshing
thirteen we still are
those thousand black hole horse suns
so plush
& so rotten
with horsebitten love.
