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Dust
Work shirt, faded jeans and old
scuffed boots, fragrance
of soaped leather. No one’s called
her pretty in the last 20 years.
But nights, she lies down while time
makes his own kind of love.
Next morning, another day crossed off
with creases. Button the old
blue shirt, shove feet into boots
to go on walking as far as sunset
to meet him, the new lover.
The Sun Will Explode in 6 Years
(Weekly World News)
And then dawns a black morning,
blacker than black coffee,
blacker than last night’s dream of spiders
crawling out of the bathtub drain.
Blacker than the face of a lynched man,
blacker than blues played only
on the sharps and flats,
blacker than the back of a bad-luck beetle.
Blacker than Hearts in the devil’s cards.
Blacker than a missing button,
blacker than its buttonhole.
Blacker than the inside of a closet
full of a dead girl’s shoes.
Blacker than you’d ever imagine a sky
at night could be.
Perspective
From the 101st floor
everything looks dead as wax,
the tiny faces,
the street immobilized to a single
moment: a city become its own
museum. A parachute-billow of silk-
gray smoke, of flame.
The scream of such a high window
clicking open on forever.
Massage
Don’t expect thanks for this gift,
an hour’s stranger’s hands
straightening her kinks.
She loves those kinks.
She keeps every knotted muscle
closer than a friend.
Maybe she’s in a mirror scarred.
You’ll never touch the breakable
soft places, the untouchable
spaces nobody’s meant
to see.
Hand-written Notes
How can you love a man
without a voice, with no weight
or presence, with no history
beyond these thorny lines
posted across states, a west-
bound signature fixed
to the wandering bark
of your imagination?
So what if that crabbed
hand pricks & sticks &
itches long after
you’ve read the words?
Taylor Graham Coal City Review editor Brian Daldorph calls this poet " a meticulous wordsmith, writing often of her experiences as a rescue dog handler.
Every word of each poem is carefully considered, and yet there is fluency and grace to her poems that sometimes seem like the mysterious
language of bird tracks in the snow. Taylor helps us to remember our links with the natural world." Graham has published four collections,
including Casualties ( Coal City Review) and Looking for Lost ( Hot Pepper Press), as well as poems in myriad publications. She is also
on the editorial board of The Acorn, a regional literary journal focusing on the western Sierra.
("Ten Poets to Watch", Writer's Digest April 2000)
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