Gordon Taylor

So, I'll be quiet and drink

hot chocolate with extra whipped cream

while walking to my childhood trauma

recovery group, Resourced and Resilient—

sounds like a bouncy castle

rented for a birthday.

Morning fog is low

as an ache in the ankles.

My neighbour's bay window

was smashed on New Year's Eve.

A sleet of broken glass crunches like ice

under my steel-toed boots.

I'm no longer surprised

by surprises. My neighbour insists

we bury her with the 1000th piece

of a jigsaw puzzle. We can keep the rest.

She has a terminal lung disease.

Death is just declining

love, she says.

No one wants puzzles anymore.

Is it because there's still

countless volumes of air? I've walked as far

as St. James Park. Cathedral bells

chime at an odd time: 9:13.

So, I'll pretend my days are scored

by a laugh track. I'll think about the word

schlong and how it'd be fun to use as a verb.

The elephant trunks schlonging in unison.

The pundit burling and schlonging

his rhetoric deep into a crowd,

inducing blindness. The fog

won't be gone until noon.

My best friend won't forgive me

for writing a poem about her without asking

if the description of her wrinkled forehead

was flattering. We've known each other

forty years. We met before the internet.

Before recycling. Our teenaged bodies

were mysteries. Instead of Google,

we had The Yellow Pages. A book

thicker than a thigh.

No drawer could hold it.

My vocabulary is shrinking.

My bicep is a mountain range

of scars from the slow scrape of laser

against the charcoal of a false sun

needled into me decades ago.

I’m removing the tattoo to seem fresher

to myself, to make my arms

sacred again.

It has taken a year

to disappear. I descend

the staircase to the subway

(No, not a Duchamp nude.

No, not the sandwich store).

The man lying on the salt-smudged landing

is moaning like a theremin, an anthem

of the world. An instrument

so in tune it cries

music without being touched.

Just a gesture, a glance is enough.