William Taylor Jr.- Three Poems

Like a Fire

I guess the best way to explain it

is to imagine the perfect and irrefutable

sorrow of the world

that lies at the core of everything,

and me digging for it

like some ragged prisoner

with a broken spoon.

Sorrow knows our names

and writes our dreams,

we've no reason

to seek it out,

and yet to somehow take it unawares,

to breach the very heart of it

and make its terrible secret

my own

is a dream that drags me onward.

See, sometimes

when I feel it in my veins

like a fire,

when I speak with its voice

and see with its eyes,

I know I am closer to something.

His Wound

She is his wound,

the one that didn't heal,

and now his life

just a series of days

that take him

further from her.

In the quiet hours

he dissolves himself

in whiskey, plays

old records and sings

his memories,

the only soft things

that remain.

He doesn’t sleep,

just drifts

in and out of dreams,

wandering his sorrow

in search of the place

where he once

was whole.

The Horn

The day isn't much,

another thing half-born

and destined for obscurity.

It's too hot.

The poems aren't coming

and the story just isn't

very good.

The sun gives in

and I just don't know

what to do with anything.

I almost wish

I were back at work,

where I don't have to

flail about so much

for purpose or direction.

I just screw the one thing

onto the other,

and move on to the next,

again and again.

The hours pass,

empty but without much

trouble,

and then the horn

eventually sounds,

telling me I'm done.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including The New York Quarterly, The Chiron Review, and Poesy. 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.