The lights go out before undressing. Immodest
husbandry, taut upon the examination table, a canvas

of hemoglobins for the toxicologist turning over
the toe tag dog-eared like a chapter of a favorite Comedy.

I prayed and I heard
how dare you on the other end of the aetherphone.

Poison of the thorn used like a local anesthetic, topical
for the itch of phantom limbs, each one of them—culled

and curing my particular arc of heaven that bends
toward this ditch of pumpkin flowers. It was autumn and it goes

without saying. In the Britannica of the Dead, theirs are the names
that need not be written down and are. I come back to them.

Globe on the lathe, whittled down. Is there one
on the other end who waits for me on a winged horse?

 

 

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Taylor Supplee served as the first Lucie Brock-Broido Teaching Fellow at Columbia. His poems have appeared in American Literary Review, Baltimore Review, Carve, diode, Hunger Mountain, Kestrel, The Moth, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, Thrush, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere.

 

 

 

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash