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. "'Nothing prepared me for island life,' Cristina A. Bejan notes in a memorable poem of exile. The island of poetry has always been with her, a physical and spiritual island composed of people she loves or not, the dailiness of a lived and detailed life in her country of origin, the languages that express them. These poems infuse the English language with the pleasures of a world I loved surrendering to. She is a poet through and through, born that way, and generously ours now." -Andrei Codrescu , author of No Time like Now: New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series, 2019) " Cristina A. Bejan 's collection of poetry Green Horses on the Walls (Cai Verzi pe Pereți) is a sensitive and vibrant radiography of the immigrant inbetweeness: the soul-searching negotiation between images/words/values immersed in her father's native country, Romania, and the daily discoveries made by the poet as a young American woman in the #MeToo era. This lyrical coming-of-age puzzle takes us on a poignant journey into the future via the past, across geographical and emotional borders. Let's go!" -Saviana Stanescu , author of Aliens with Extraordinary Skills, Google Me , etc. " Cristina A. Bejan 's collection Green Horses on the Walls is a raw and startling odyssey of a quivering self, torn between cultures, languages, tormented family histories, wrenching traumas and a fierce drive to heal and transform experience into redemptive and empowering art. The poetic voice bursts with uncompromising honesty, and hints of nostalgia for luscious and disheveled landscapes such as the restless streets and people of Bucharest, as it also traverses frightening landscapes of a memory painfully replete with harrowing moments of sexual violence and sinister mental health wards. Experience is channeled in an effervescent and gutsy linguistic orchestration deliciously sprinkled with polyglossia, at times heartbreaking at other times suspenseful and yet at other times luminous and whimsical. A poetic tour de force of cathartic story telling!" -Domnica Radulescu , award-winning author of Train to Trieste and Country of Red Azaleas " Bejan 's work traverses all matters of the heart: true love, mental health, home, country, and politics. Her careful attention to her family's history and her own diaspora creates very intimate moments inside a larger artistic and political conversation. Her translations are fresh; energetic; and her bilingual work carves out a space for her Romanian-American identity. The raw emotion pulls you into this collection. Visit the mind of Bejan through her images, as she reckons with her experiences and family history." -Suzanne Richardson , author of The Softest Part of A Woman is A Wound " Cristina A. Bejan 's poetry has the urgency of Clint Smith's spoken word rhythms from his Counting Descent , the humor of Milan Kundera's The Joke , and the honesty of Naomi Shihab Nye's Voices in the Air . Cristina Bejan's poetry sounds as if the Romanian painter Adrian Ghenie is having coffee with Walt Whitman. Poised at the intersection between languages, cultures, and histo