By Gordon Taylor
Featured Art: “Weaving a Nest” by Lily Jarrell

notice my eyes
mistaking the wildfire’s distant glow
for sunrise. Notice my heart moving
away from a constant rhythm.
The cardiologist heard this too.
I am a drifter, I explained, my heart
is easily distracted. I want to change
the way I write
from confession to observation,
but it’s difficult to stay with one image
longer than a line.
This is why I’ve written so many poems
without endings.
This is why I’ve had several husbands.
My marriages never resulted in divorce.
I simply began searching the horizon
for continuity errors. Sunset
seeming like sunrise
with no day in between. Dear attention,
notice I describe the sky
heading into dusk
as the inside of a ripe peach.
Now it’s cooked salmon.
Now a tarnished silver-pink.
I’ve wandered years
in my own neighborhood without admitting
I am going to die.
What are we waiting for? Dear winter
sun with your darkening stare.
Dear silentium, I can’t pretend anymore
that I am not afraid.
I am not Lot’s wife under rain,
nameless and brave,
turning to witness what happens behind me.
I know the past
changes shape all the time.
I know I am becoming something else.

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Gordon Taylor is a queer, emerging poet whose poems have appeared in Narrative, Cincinnati Review, Rattle Poet’s Respond, Poet Lore, Palette Poetry, and more.