William Taylor, Jr.
Test Subject
My friend is a poet
which is to say
he is egocentric
half insane
and has no money.
He finds me at the bar
begs a drink and
sits down at my table.
He sips a bit
from a glass of whiskey
sets it down
hard upon the wood
and says,
I have decided
as soon as they finish
building that
suicide
fence on the
golden gate bridge
I will be the first
to try it out.
Either I'll be dead
or at least they'll know
the damn thing works.
He laughs
and quickly finishes
his drink
before the bartender
has the chance
to kick him out
for disturbing
the paying
customers.
In Our Best Moments
Some days
I dearly want to fall in love
with us again.
And by us, I mean
all of us.
I want us,
in our best moments,
to be as beautiful
as we are
in photographs
and in movies,
as we are in books and magazines.
I want us to be as beautiful
as we are in memories
and dreams
when we are
no longer here.
Some days
I still like to imagine,
for the briefest of moments
we can all be
as beautiful in life
as we are in death.
The Heat
It was a strangely hot
day in San Francisco
and I stretched out in the cool
grass of the park with a
cheap six pack
along with all the others
who had nothing
better to do.
The feel of the sun
the grass
and the cold
cold beer
was as good as anything
the world had to offer.
A shirtless man
not much older than myself
sat down beside me.
He said nothing
and I said nothing
and we sat that way
for a while.
I've been sober for ten days,
he finally said,
and I don't much see the point.
I smiled a bit
in reply.
Mind if I have one of those,
he asked, motioning
toward the beer.
I nodded and handed him
a bottle.
He popped the cap and took a long drink.
It's good, he said.
Indeed, I replied.
The heat, he continued,
makes it hard
to do anything.
But then I guess
that's life,
all you can do
is relax a bit
and wait for it
to pass.
The heat, I asked,
or life?
Whichever.
Don Winter
Buffing
I buffed a floor
at Wanda’s Grill and the buffer hit
a slick spot, went gazooming like a kid
spinning to be dizzy and kicked
my balls. But no, I squealed like a hog,
oh goddamn but no. All boss did
was put ice down there real fast
to get the heat out.
He said I might be a eunuch
in at least my right nut
and don’t forget to fill out
this accident report. After work,
I went to Tintop Tavern
and said to my girl,
Here sit in my lap.
Nothing would go down nor come up.
She couldn’t make it, neither.
there’s just gonna be
a lil’ piece of your ass left.
She was drunk as a hoot owl.
Pabst on tap.
Your mouth’s runnin’
Like a whippoorwill’s ass
in chokecherry season.
I picked a cue
and leaned. The eight ball wobbled
like a thrown wheel
and scratched.
Lonesome Town
“Andy stole my cherry
on a toothpick
& swallowed it whole,”
she sd. I was out
of the army a couple weeks,
madly in lust. “Now Andy’s gone,
no one can say where,
otherwise I wouldn’t be dancing
in this shithole.” She smelled
like a dogpound in August, but
she had a wad of bills
the size of a sandwich. Had a snake
tattooed around her ankle,
pierced nipple & that edgy, unreachable
disinterest I couldn’t
get enough of.
Two hundred for the night, two bones
from her dealer later, we jumped
into a Checker cab.
Back in my room,
The dope dropped my head
Like a tulip.
She cleaned me out.
“Ants,” she sd.
next day at the club,
“people are ants,”
lifted her feet & stomped
them down. Next morning, I started begging
my way back to my folk’s house
in Bumfuck, USA.
At The Tavern
a man slips
into his seat
with a sigh
like an accordion
folding into its case
The Tacoma Tavern
is drunk with rain.
And our tables are careless
with empty bottles, cigarette ash.
And we run our fevers
up over a hundred
arm wrestling our motorcycle buddies,
drinking pitchers on one breath
for a dollar. And we try to drink enough
to lose our names.
And we make up stories to fit
the bad things. By turns hero and victim.
And the waitress acts vaguely in love
with each man. And the need for touch
is a razor-toting, cuss-tongued bad ass.
And the best sex rises from vacancies:
divorces, failed jobs, incarcerations.
And the closing time door flings open
like a warrant.
And the land tears away from us
and slides off the horizons.
The publisher would like to thank the following publications and their numerous, insightful editors for first printing some of the included work:
3rd MUSE, 5AM, AMERICAN STANDARD, ANTIPATICO, BLACK ACE, BLUE COLLAR REVIEW, BLINDMAN’S RAINBOW, THE CENTRIFUGAL EYE, DEEP CLEVELAND JUNKMAIL ORACLE, DEVOUT MAN’S LATE NIGHT PRAYER, FIGHT THESE BASTARDS, FREE VERSE, GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM DHARMA, JOEY AND THE BLACK BOOTS, KICKASS REVIEW, THE LAUGHING DOG, LEGAL STUDIES FORUM, LUMMOX JOURNAL, MASTODON DENTIST, MY FAVORITE BULLET, NERVE COWBOY, NEW YORK QUARTERLY, THE ORANGE ROOM REVIEW, OUTLAW MAGAZINE, PLAINSONGS, THE PLANET E’S ZINE, POETIC INHALATION, PRESA: PRESS, QUERCUS REVIEW, REMARK., RIGHT HAND POINTING, ST. VITUS, SLIPSTREAM, THE STINGING FLY, STRAIGHT FROM THE FRIDGE, TAMAFYR MOUNTAIN POETRY, TAPROOT LITERARY REVIEW, TEARS IN THE FENCE, VIS-A-SEPTIC, WISCONSIN POET’S CALENDAR, WHEELHOUSE POETRY, WORDS DANCE, THE WORMWOOD REVIEW, X MAGAZINE, and
ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE
-and as broadsides, included in chapbooks, or other various ephemera from-
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