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
By NORMAN LOCK
Fluent in the languages of unnatural death, Luis Boscán set down on thick paper the confessions of the Spanish damned while, outside the cruel chamber furnished ingeniously with instruments of torment, the fountains of Seville produced liquid acanthus leaves to the sound of castanets.
By CODY WALKER
You’re just a baby,
And as such, may be
Susceptible to lies
(And wonder, and surprise):
By CORINNA MCCLANAHAN SCHROEDER
Follow the serpentine river roads
toward the Little Miami’s lip. Pass through
the sycamore trunks, their whitewashed
limbs. See how they molt their skins.
One of several names given to a ghost island that appeared in July 1831
When the buried volcano erupted,
sulfuric smoke leapt from the Sicilian sea,
seeped through locked, felt-lined chests,
blackening the silverware.
By DON SHARE
I have a bone to pick
with whoever runs this joint.
I don’t much like
being stuck out in the rain
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