Coral-tinted pearl
/Coral-tinted pearl, poem, Curtis Taylor
'O Liberty Eden': at The Grocery Studios/Beacon Hill, Seattle
/O Liberty Eden (gallery view)
Two poems: 'Death grows a tree' and 'Nightstand'
/two poems, by Curtis Taylor
poem: Glen’s Window Cleaning
/GLEN’S WINDOW CLEANING
Gutter cleaning, pressure washing
moss removal, it’s all there
on the door of his truck with the
chrome tread plate tool box in the bed.
Glen is the type of guy, tidy beard
hair tied back who walks around
slashing the air with arms swinging
as if pulling himself forward
to some place always just ahead.
Does he have sympathy for them?
As he sluices water over the panes
up on his ladder Glen sees people
alone in the windows caught in traps.
Is it their fault they are caught in the trap?
They look back at him, unsurprised
to be seen, really it’s their window
after all, so Glen makes as though
he’s not there but he cannot unsee
like he cannot unknow because once
looking out his own window, night falling
as a tree fanned the grain of black leaves
against the sky, Glen was able to see
who might be watching.
Curtis Taylor
The world never again, or before
/Floating Bridge Press/Pontoon Poetry
How to photograph the details of a dark horse in low light
/There was an old man who lived in her apartment building who she would see wearing the uniform and badge of a private security service. One morning he surprises her in the basement room where the trash bins are kept. He is standing out of the light staring at a pornographic magazine. He doesn’t look up as she empties her waste basket. A couple days later he is in her dreams, wearing a big costume horse head along with the security guard uniform. He takes off the head and stares into her eyes. ‘I love you’ he says and moves closer, slowly, as if beginning a complicated dance step.
O, Liberty Eden: Spar Tree No.1
/Spar Tree No.1: O, Liberty Eden: Curtis Taylor, oil on panel
O, Liberty Eden...Boom Pond Plume
/Boom Pond Plume: O, Liberty Eden: Curtis Taylor, oil on panel
This is why he is like that
/A boy went to a party with a girl. He left her alone to join a group of friends smoking and drinking in the basement. Upstairs the girl cried but in a way that no one could see. A young man came into the party. No one knew him. He made friends. He saw the girl who was there crying. The boy came up from the basement. The girl was gone. He went home. When his mother woke him it was past noon the next day. The girl’s father was on the phone. He wanted to know where his daughter was.