Green Horses on the Walls

2021 Independent Press Book Award winner! 2021 Human Relations Indie Book Award Gold Winner (Historical) Silver Winner (Reflection) Silver Winner (Realistic Poetry) and Honorable Mention (Personal Challenge Poetry)! Finalist for the 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist (Women's Issues) and the 2021 Colorado Authors League Book Award (Cover Design). Green Horses on the Walls is a collection of poems by Cristina A. Bejan. Many of these spoken word poems were part of the one-woman show entitled Lady Godiva (performed by Muslima Musawwir and directed by Star Johnson) which appeared at Source Theatre as part of the Mead Theatre Lab Program in February 2016 in Washington DC. Bejan writes about her Romanian heritage the inherited trauma of communism love mental health and sexual assault. The poems capture Bejan's tortured love affair with the country her father escaped in 1969: Romania. Like so many exiles and migrants around the world there is a compulsion to return and to leave the homeland. I don't think it will ever stop Bejan writes. Romania suffered a brutal communist dictatorship for forty years and these poems reveal the horrors and the inherited trauma that are products of such historical injustice. She also tackles the sensitive topics of mental health and sexual assault and with this collection hopes to fight the pervasive stigma surrounding both issues. And finally this is a book about love: family love love of ancestors mindless youthful mistakes the realities of American dating forbidden love and finally true equal miraculous love. The collection includes 28 original poems by Bejan and two translations by Bejan of poems by iconic Romanian poets Ana Blandiana and Nina Cassian. Bejan's poems are mostly in English with Romanian and French making important appearances. All views expressed are the author's.