William Taylor Jr.- Three Poems

The Things the Pretty Girls Say

It's the last day of Summer

as I sit at a sidewalk table

at a North Beach cafe

clinging to the hours

like a drowning man,

and after a few glasses of wine

I believe all the stories

the sun has to tell,

I believe the things the pretty girls say

with their dream-fed smiles

and the movement of their tanned

and skinny arms,

and all these people at their tables

just like mine,

with their wine and their

tiny plates of food, their porcelain wives

and glimmering children,

surely they understand, just as I do,

that the world is made of magic after all,

and light will have the final say,

and the dark is just a nasty story

told by some demented dwarf

in a lonely basement

to keep the children in line,

and death is just a baseless rumor,

obsolete and powerless

in the face of one last hour

of sunlight,

another glass of wine,

and the smell of this woman

at the table

next to mine.

Meat

For a good portion of my life I couldn't figure out why people liked steak.

I had nothing against meat, I liked meat just fine-

but in my parents' house, in the summer months,

every Sunday evening we had steak for dinner.

We were to consider it a treat, a delicacy,

something to look forward to.

When I saw people eating steaks on television or in movies

it seemed like a good thing, and their eyes lit up when they spoke of it.

But when my father put the plate in front of me

the slab of meat was always gray and joyless.

It tasted like nothing and each leathery piece was a chore to chew.

Our steaks were like that because that's

how my mom imagined they were supposed to be.

My dad would bring in the platter from the backyard grill

and present it to my mother for inspection.

They're not done, my mom would invariably say, look at all that blood!

It's not blood, my dad would reply, it's juice.

We can't eat them like that, take them back and cook them until they're done!

My dad would say something under his breath and then take the meat away

and bring it back a while later when there was no more juice or blood.

Then we'd all sit there at the table not saying much of anything.

We'd smother the meat in A1 Sauce and chew and chew and chew.

I'd put ketchup on mine, place it between two pieces of wonder bread

and pretend it was a hamburger.

My mother would scold me, telling me I didn't know

how to appreciate good things.

At some point at a friend's house, a restaurant, somewhere,

I had a steak in the manner they were meant to be consumed:

it was seared on the outside, but the thick cube of meat

was tender and juicy and red just beneath the surface.

I was startled at first; it was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

It tasted like all the colors of life and death and the blood and juice

dribbled down my chin and onto the plate, and I sopped it up

with a piece of bread and when it was gone I wanted more.

Things in general suddenly made a bit more sense to me,

and I wondered what else I had been missing out on.

It was then that a part of me first began to understand

that so much of life is spent simply recovering

the basic joys that others, through ignorance or malice,

are forever bent on stealing from us.

Playing Hooky on a Pretty Wednesday Afternoon

We're all broken beneath the sun,

but if you're lucky enough

to ocassionaly escape the trap of things,

however briefly,

it's surely the stuff of victory.

The trap you've built for yourself,

the trap others have built for you,

the trap of the world.

You left work early

with nowhere in particular to be.

The sun and sky are perfect

as you sit beneath them with your wine.

The afternoon is a stolen kiss

and the stones of the years fall from your pockets

as birds and children scurry them away.

In this gifted moment

ablsolve yourself of everything,

remember her kindly and with joy.

Breathe the air like an animal,

accept the day like a blessed curse,

not worrying so much

if you can't find an ending

for the poem.

 

 

 

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. An Age of Monsters, his first book of fiction, was published by Epic Rites Press in 2011. The Blood of a Tourist (Sunnyoutside, 2014) is his latest collection of poetry. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and was a recipient of the 2013 Acker Award.