Poetry
Taylor Graham
DOGS AGOIn this reduced circumstance of fleas and fur and scratching at the screendoor to come in muddy and balls chewed rubber all over the floor, of Dad using up his deep-bass arsenal against the way of tails and long wet nuzzles, in these grave days of clean- up-corners meant to sell off (at a profit) doorstep, bedstead, attic, garden and anything that grows up green or fuzzy, in days without chasing rabbits and ear-rubs, no- body howling at the paperboy or moon, where shall we go now, having left all those licks behind? DESTINATIONSA gravel road unravels among spring-green folds, under dollops of cloud. Just out of sight the interstate goes traveling east & west with all its destinations. But somebody walking the center of this one-lane left his plans at home & simply walks on imagining the taste of green like pistachio sourgrass & mint & blinks his eyes at whatever limey clouds pass over. DUMPSTER DIVERmakes his rounds for buried treasure, a nickel for every Miller can smashed outside the Spotless Carwash with its cleaned- out glove compartments, somebody's wallet with no cash; the alley out behind a hawkery of finance, lawyer litter at the heart of downtown where you never know whose hands these things have passed through, never know what else you'll find of discard worn out with outdated news- papers, checks, unshredded secrets deep-sixed for the delving. BEFORE THE YEAR ENDSmake lists of presents hang angels on the tree sweep up all the dog-hair send cards to everyone you know bake dozens of cookies wrap up presents make lists of resolutions eat dozens of cookies sweep up all the dog-hair rip wrapping off the presents cross friends off your list take dead angels off the tree put their harps away & put the old dead dog to sleep count the hours till midnight when the calendar turns over & everything will be different STREET VIBRATIONSThe bikers arrived from north and south and east and west for an event we hadn't come to see: motorcycles gleaming by hundreds at the sidewalks, black-jacketed ladies adjusting their helmet straps in the late September heat, then streaming up every street like thunderclouds. I set it down to remember how the sticky pavement had a resonance. As afternoon slipped, the cottonwoods shivered into equinox; and a desert night without stars, the casinos a low gleam in the distance; and the wild geese passing over with their unsettling calls of somewhere else. I'm a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Chattahoochee Review, Free Lunch, The Iowa Review, New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Yankee and elsewhere. My latest collection is An Hour in the Cougar's Grace (Pudding House, 2000). |