Featured Poet

Mervyn Taylor

Assault On The Second Wall

In terms of war, there is no second wall,
But the mind second guesses itself
Near the entrance, where a mine
Has fallen into a child's hands.

And she plays and sings, and calls
Her mother's name before the explosion
Rocks the blue building and sends
The soldiers flying, guns drawn

Towards the southern end of town
Where the rumors have their enemies
Sighted since Wednesday. Then
One of them, exhausted by fear, leaning

Against the samaan in the center
Of the square, sees the little yellow ball
Of cloth, hair and blood a woman holds
Up, like an offering, and wearily

He straightens, waving to his compatriots.
Slowly they re-enter their squad room
And slip their rifles to the floor, quietly,
And close their eyes against the desert grit.

© 2002 Mervyn Taylor

~ .

Casualties

In human terms, the cost is expensive.
The earth will have to
Dig in her purse like an old woman
Or the butcher will take back his meat.

Perhaps it is not so bad. She can wrap herself
In leaves and eat the tomatoes
That burst their thin skins. She can squat
near palaces in cities built of her own clay.

She can follow the armies that take her dirt
To bury their dead. She can swallow her pride,
Pockmarked and disguised as a refugee,
She can sit in a camp. Or

She can smile in the eye of one whose hobby
Is astronomy, a pretty blue marble,
Spinning with her sun and moon, sucking salt
Through a wooden spoon.

© 2002 Mervyn Taylor

~ .

Magenta Moon

by April the lake should be magenta,
a word that allows you to laugh
as you say it.

by then you should have been there
and back several times, so by now
you're familiar with all the shades

in between, the mountain reflected
in the middle, the notes to the song
returning birds add each day.

now the breeze is steadily warmer,
and your impatient face is dyed
like an initiate's going to fulfill

his pledge. except you are still,
sitting at the edge of this bowlful
of water, purple as the bruise

he'll return with, the mark of
his manhood your hand
will soothe.

© 2002 Mervyn Taylor

~ .

The Monarch

A butterfly swims among the plants
In my house. It is a monarch that
Must have followed me home from
The country, in the pocket of a shirt.

The fan of the elephant ear opens
To hear it, above the din of summer
In the early light of a Tuesday,
My dream of you hardly over, clenched

Like a Hong Kong pillow, tea unmade
In the kitchen. The end of a season is
Approaching, loves are ending in divorce
And duty rosters are being posted, sternly,

With lots of hammering. But the butterfly
Flits in this new garden, affording me
A new mystery. As a man curses sweetly
Godammit under a Mack truck's squeal,

The croton and the ivy come to me
Like children, and I must think fast, for
The day is growing older by the minute,
And this species is fatally sensitive to cold.

© 2001 Mervyn Taylor

~ .

Till Tomorrow

This is a wish for kibbutzes
To find a place no one would dispute,
A longing

For Palestinians to feel peace
Between their toes flowing as
Freely as sand

For the morning to have a dawn
Creep over the trellises like glories
Normal and everyday

For hearts to heal soon after
They're broken, and bodies to recover
From strokes without dragging

For time to wait a minute
While the bullets go off course
And give everyone second chances

For gracious answers to insults
For a chair when waiting is important
For a house when the backdoor closes

For elephants to trumpet and
Let us know they are coming, for
The flood to recede before the snake

Hides in the monsoon mud,
For the highest hill in the land
To save the last people on earth

From fighting any longer, from
Believing that the stars belong only
To the ones with long arms, a longing

For the current to bring us back
To shore, lights glowing from windows,
Not from the wreckage, of our lives.

© 2001 Mervyn Taylor

~ .

Ways
          for V

In myriad ways my lover
Comes to me. As an heiress,
All her family's baubles
Strapped to her like beautiful
Bombs. Yesterday she detonated
Her mother's pearls.

Or like a sapodilla, bursting
Warmth and sweetness, fuzzy
To the touch, becoming one with
The couch we lay on, the antique
Arm of my player lifting and
Clicking and playing again.

Sometimes she blares like
The horn of an impatient motorist
Under my window that sounds
As if it were inside my head, when
She wants me to move and I'm
Frozen in the traffic of ideas.

And then she can be truly
The female of the species, upwind,
Her back to me, knowing
Just what she is doing, stamping
Her foot, her tailbone
The most alluring art in history.

And I study all her poses:
As she approaches perfection, as
She strays so far from it she's
A lump, as the hand that molds her
Goes to work again, and I marvel,
Pieces of clay flying everywhere.

© 2001 Mervyn Taylor

~ . ~

Mervyn Taylor, a native of Trinidad, West Indies, is the author of two volumes of poetry, An Island of His Own (Junction Press, 1992) and The Goat (Junction Press, 1999). He is an instructor in the Writing Program at the New School for Social Research Eugene Lang College in Manhattan and also teaches writing and journalism at the High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A former New York Foundation for the Arts award winner, Mr. Taylor's poems are included in the anthologies, Bum Rush the Page, Giant Talk, and Rock Against the Wind. Journals where his work has appeared include Antillea, the Harlem Arts Journal, Pivot, St. Ann's Review, Steppingstones, and Sulfur. Mr. Taylor recently read his work on the air for Pacifica Radio. Other recent appearances include: the Brooklyn Spring Poetry Fair sponsored by the Brooklyn Borough President; the Brooklyn Poet's Day Reading at Brooklyn College; and Lincoln Center Outdoors. He is at work on a new manuscript, tentatively titled, The Careening Poui.

Note: Mervyn Taylor's poems appear by express permission of the author. The unauthorized reproduction or use thereof in the U.S. or elsewhere is prohibited. The magazine home page and Masthead contain statements on copyright protection under domestic and foreign statutory and common law and on the consequences of infringement; by this reference, the same are hereby incorporated as though fully set forth herein. [Eds.]