The Shallow Ends
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HERE

1/17/2019

 
                    by John Allen Taylor 
                    
                    for Brionne & Kyle

here we are             sitting in this red velvet lung
of a bar sipping martinis & asking for extra olives

our six knees knocking together like the night’s
percussion             & though we’re not in love

we can pretend for one evening that we’ll wake
together             our throats opening & closing

out of rhythm like fish in a torn net
one of us slips through first             then another

the bed lies empty as usual & our hands
stretch back into being unheld

here we are slipping gracelessly
into the steel bodies of taxis & airplanes

thrumming a catastrophe of city & grit
into the space between us

my airplane touches down in Michigan
which I am still practicing    to call home

here we are singing into our own showers
with bars of soap & dead sea creatures

into the splendid fogs of morning
& lateness             I can’t tell you how afraid

I am             how the time collects like coins
stacked on the eyes I try to open daily

now here I am eating stale airline
peanuts             & putting away the mower

come & see the garden             the sweet peas

are spent but the squash is wild & cheerful

come & look             the sunflowers sway
like a mob of mourners, chickadees preening

their seedy faces             come & see the garden
come & see             it’s not so terrible to exist

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John Allen Taylor’s first chapbook, Unmonstrous, is forthcoming from YesYes Books in March 2019. His poems are published in DIAGRAM, Nashville Review, The Common, Pleiades, and other places. He serves as Ploughshares’s senior poetry reader, coordinates the Writing Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and has recently started baking sourdough bread. Say hello @johna_taylor. 

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