Randall Horton
the new love
new love wearing logical rouge lipstick, conceptually & very positive, sashays: illogical would be too ignorant a testimonial when strolling stiletto heel pumps against the grain of traffic. an illusion, is art, magicians never predict what’s under the skirt: make-believe tina turner legs. an optical illusion: under a chandelier of bright moon, winos howl perfectly at night, the peter can’t see straight phallic tendencies or won’t nobody challenge hocus pocus power or the new in love, traditionally. men & women do not blur boundaries. to overrule wall paper painted blue little boy loving pink learned pugilism. to survive who you calling sissy ass muthafucka new love dotted eyes. amazed at the I in he she or them, few understand the muscle of I am like code switching down logan circle could be a runway.
Randall Horton is the author of Pitch Dark Anarchy (Triquarterly, 2013), The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street (Main Street Rag, 2009), and The Definition of Place (Main Street Rag, 2006). With M L Hunter and Becky Thompson, he edited the anthology Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora (Third World Press, 2007). His creative and critical work has appeared in Callaloo, Sou’wester, Caduceus, New Haven Review, and The Offending Adam, among other journals, and in the anthology Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010), edited by Kelly Norman Ellis and ML Hunter. Randall is the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea González Poetry Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and is a Cave Canem Graduate Fellow. Randall is an assistant professor of English at the University of New Haven.
This poem appeared in the anthology Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS (Third World Press, 2010), edited by Kelly Norman Ellis and ML Hunter.