This was a butcher. This, a Chinese laundry.
This was a Schrafft’s with 10-cent custard ice creams.
Off toward the park, that was the new St. Saviour.
As the deaf-mute grocery clerk
puckers curious to a chorus “O”
to ask what kind of mushrooms
he should be ringing up, I think
of Ortiz and last night’s double
It might be a skirt girls wear
for Beltane or another pastoral
occasion, in Eastern Europe
perhaps.
When my nineteen-year-old son turns on the kitchen tap
and leans down over the sink and turns his head sideways
to drink directly from the stream of cool water,
I think of my older brother, now almost ten years gone,
who used to do the same thing at that age;
The nature of a hedge is to be
high. To obscure. Look,
berries have appeared overnight, like
arson, a smolder of nest
rests in the ivy like a rowboat
gone over some falls.
DIANA BABINEAU interviews TESS TAYLOR
Today we celebrate the publication of Tess Taylor’s The Forage House with two new poems from her debut collection (“Official History”, “Southampton County Will 1745”), complete with audio recordings. In the following interview with Diana Babineau, Taylor talks about personal ancestry, American roots, and slavery, as she attempts to uncover what remains of a broken past.
By JON THOMPSON
“as the camera moves
through the streets of the Mexican border town
the plan was to feature
a succession of different and contrasting
Latin American musical numbers—
1. goose girl
I’m chatting away merrily to his back
About how my grandmother worked here
As a nursemaid. Little changes
On an island. Look, a goose girl
In a floppy bonnet, charges honking.
You will only be heard
When the noise
Has died down
And the air so clear
You can hear
The soundless
Soundtrack of bats
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Celebrating 15 Years