Ed Taylor lives in Falls Church, VA, and has had work appear in Exquisite Corpse, Black Ice, Fiction International, Another Chicago Magazine and many other places. He can be reached at webmgr@arts.endow.gov.






GALLERY TALK



Whose "Madonna" do I sit beside? All this beauty's like a nail in the head. Finally agitation jumps me, wrinkles my rug. Venus, baby, you don't get it, I shout, the tractor-trailer of love has run off the road. A guard with too much gray in his head tells me not to take it so PERsonal and please to avoid the scarring of Patrons. Then he talks perspective and pats his hat and between empire furniture and him I come to understand the grand questions, even the eternal bullfight beyond the door. The glory of cardinal red in sawdust! O sublime, the sun's gleam on the black back of the male cow! And Love? Just surface and angle, after all. Whew, that was close. Where is rack of postcards--I need proof.




CANCION D'AMOR

I awake, my lioness, to the bonecrack of happiness.
(In my dream, love, angels held our coats,
were seconds, as the pistols paced
and we lay down in the velvet case.)

The lightning of your legs converts me to Quaker,
grounds my squadron with clouds of joy,
ends et cetera forever. Your countless
breasts,
your heads and breath, fur and sap,
teeth gaps, sweet trappings,
outnumber even my cubist eye.
Your selves surround me--I howl in ecstacy.

Whatever remains once you have your fill,
offer to other beautiful hungers.

JUJU

On Shinnecock a lone trapper
mailing address for mind-body correspondence
discretion from creatures without mouthpieces
no miracles after all, just this world of grease
for Jesus
electricity like balm to spike ears
snakes and ladders
batter for cake and wife
the option-encrusted throne o'god
bracing for dust

RAIN TRACTION GHAZAL

My love limps in velvet (her species a magnet for disaster)
but don't get me wrong, she is the color of any port in a storm.
Valued one-millionth customer with long brass tenor neck,
beveled face of many facets, rubber hair full of coins.
For good luck rub her digits till the paint flakes into your lungs
and you cough up a colored ball for her two-piece cue
instead of your heart, which you'll keep kneading.
On her mountain she makes lightning, she waits
with hammer and tongs--I'm late and she hates being alone.
Later we'll drive off Lover's Leap: but first; rehearse until it's
right, for the commercial.




Ed Taylor



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