PARK BENCH EXERCISES

Under the same old January sky he sits pretending not to be.
Ducks and pigeons, people pass
but if you never move you become
invisible. People miss
something that’s just
there, so long as it doesn’t
block traffic. And so he sits
pretending not to be. Hardly
breathing. Listen. Already
the blood’s drained to his feet,
his hand translucent as a leaf
not asking anything.

Taylor Graham

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in America, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.

Email: Taylor Graham

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