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Written by Heather Taylor
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Oct 24, 2007 at 12:27 PM |
As published in Citizen 32
The fridge is empty. I dream whole meals—
Turkey
Ham
Baked Potatoes.
Wednesday is food bank day
Rice and Beans for supper,
Peanut Butter Sandwiches every lunch.
I never ate Peanut Butter until last week.
All my pennies are in sandwich bags
weigh down my pockets on the way to
change them into quarters : enough cash
for one load of twice worn clothes
Under my coat, I wear a wrinkled work shirt,
walk 30 blocks each way to make rent and bills
passed long-lawned mansions with 2 cars on the drive
and imagine what it would be like to be rich.
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Written by Heather Taylor
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Oct 24, 2007 at 12:21 PM |
from 'Horizon & Back' (2005)
There are layers between us
The sheets
The walls
The streets
The city
The phone
Your voice crackles over time zones
Sending kisses through fibre optics
To caress my ear
“I love youâ€
I say those words
In my vacant apartment
Neat as you last left it
Red wine grown murky
In the bottom of glasses
Your head printed in my pillow
A razor forgotten by the sink
A photograph empty of you.
My last memory seems to end
With waving though terminal gates
Or plodding down long hallways
Greeted by chirpy blonde attendants
And safety procedures.
Can that be enough
In that world of ours
In those moments between
Weekends and phone bills
Can that be enough
Bodies separating us
Water choppy under airplane wings
in the sky turning blue grey
There are layers between us
The sheets
The walls
The streets
The city
The phone
But I still have you.
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Last Updated ( Oct 24, 2007 at 12:21 PM )
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Written by Heather Taylor
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Oct 24, 2007 at 12:00 PM |
Ribbons cut the sky like birthday decorations
and make a present of the atmosphere.
Lying on our backs we could be in Palastine,
Iraq or my uncle's mid-prairie farm.
Those spikes are good for keeping out, sliding under
to play commando, though some places it's for real
those enemies not merely trees in the distance
but blurred shapes with night vision googles
our stick guns real in someone's hands,
their memories of childhood fading.
I like to pretend barbwire is only for cows
electric fences giving them a psychology lesson.
How can you sleep if you think it's for children,
women with scarfs covering their faces,
dreaming of sky that goes clear to the stars
unwrapped of those reminders of war.
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Written by Heather Taylor
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Sep 26, 2005 at 10:05 PM |
AS PUBLISHED IN HANDMADE FIRE
After-school care turned 24-hour close watch
when ER doctors prescribed a housebound state:
the march of red measle ants thru checked corridors
made hospital reprieves deadly for shrivelled lungs,
pneumonia turning bronchioles into tiny fists.
My sleep surpassed counting sheep to 5 day affairs
consciousness a parade of banana syrup,
toast soldiers, my mom's open palm pounding my back
to spasms as I monkey-hung off of her knee
my head two fingers from a mixing bowl turned bucket.
My mum became warden;
I became ungrateful.
My house became the pillow
that suffocated me in the night.
It isn't ‘til now, years passed like tabloid papers,
that I remember her sat days at my bed:
my pre-pubescent frame relearning how to breathe
while she willed me back to life through sleep hungry nights,
her hand a light touch on my back, a salvation. |
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Last Updated ( Oct 24, 2007 at 11:54 AM )
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Written by Heather Taylor
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Sep 26, 2005 at 09:59 PM |
from 'Horizon & Back' (2005)
At night, he navigates abandoned mine fields,
deftly picks his way over uneven ground
to find escape in her company.
Months move only for the after hours:
a rustle of paper thin as sheets,
tea brewed socializing.
The day he didn't come
the sky sat empty of its moon,
the arid face of the countryside grown damp & heavy.
Now she clutches threads
of their last meal together
while newsprint spells a picture
of tangled limbs scattered
on a ground left fallow,
his face a crimson mask.
She volunteers to erase
the dull ache he willed her.
The boxes all ticked,
her grief is silent
as the bomb she promises to wear
under her coat.
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Last Updated ( Oct 24, 2007 at 12:02 PM )
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