The Sound of the Idea of Horses

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué

      say it in pig latin            that you couldn't feel more guilty            that marking your path                         lent something enormous in you           lent it to translators and children   fire promises       promises spreading, smoke       and to disappear as slowly as it arrived                       and where fire passes it resembles      it resembles a photograph on fire        all the notes I wrote             and the sound of the idea of horses                I left in January                  when I was vulnerable to fantasy              to someone else's fantasy of January      you shouldn't be ashamed of yourself            not now             you can't grieve everything                          we slowly learn to distinguish burning         from a burning sensation   like actors missing their cues          we were embarrassed for each other         we thought                we thought we knew something about the other's sound             about their ideas how a poem lazily lands on the floor         claiming it meant better         spreading, smoke           the "end of the world"             whatever you mean when you say you have no regrets   it was probably the translator's fault              too idiomatic           a too-soft cautionary tale                           I notice when I look in the mirror                 that you have fire-black hairI imagine my sitting here                in my poem                  which is an ugly way of saying I'm alive                  the feeling of a knot of receipts at the bottom of a bag                      my short temper      I come back to dizziness              as if it were convenient              dizzy when I come back                                  as if it were convenient                 and it had the sound of hooves    every second that passes            the seconds get smaller, tentative            and when l look                                             at myself in the mirror                  I see you getting older       out of your mouth                  music on the radio, spreading, smoke              "no regrets"                                   a brief planet, a brief meeting                   this fire never put out

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Image of Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is a poet and writer living in Chicago. He is most recently the author of Losing Miami (The Accomplices, 2019) and co-editor of An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979-1989, both of which were finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. His fourth poetry book, Madness, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. He is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Chicago where he works in the study of sexuality.

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Vol. 51/ No. 1

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Editor
Elizabeth Scanlon

The American Poetry Review is dedicated to reaching a worldwide audience with a diverse array of the best contemporary poetry and literary prose. APR also aims to expand the audience interested in poetry and literature, and to provide authors, especially poets, with a far-reaching forum in which to present their work.

APR has continued uninterrupted publication of The American Poetry Review since 1972, and has included the work of over 1,500 writers, among whom there are nine Nobel Prize laureates and thirty-three Pulitzer Prize winners.

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