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tayloe white |
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As a child, Tayloe White's mother would reward her after a visit to the pediatrician by buying her a journal. She credits her love of writing to her frequent illnesses growing up. She is a graduate of the University of Florida where she studied psychology. Her studies continue to influence her writing as well as her painting. She is a full-time artist whose works can be found locally at R. Roberts Gallery and at www.tayloewhite.com. She lives with her family in Jacksonville.
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Thank you
Thank you
for this luscious gale
in my lungs,
for this ruddy skin,
for this hand clasping
that hand.
For the cadmium red
and sword-shaped brush
that will somehow
paint in peace today.
Thank you for
those who thank
you and for those who
thank themselves.
To the God of Everything,
To the Flash in this energy field,
To the Energy Field,
To the quantum strings whose
song of a shape
made this ink.
This ink and those eyes.
Those eyes that
now read this word.
This word.
For you now reading this word,
Dearest,
Defiant,
You unlikely Holy One!
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I am slain in the spirit of poetry--
doubled over and beside myself,
witness to images burning.
All ecstatic,
All unbecoming,
All causing the
better-dressed congregants
to whisper low beneath
their noses pressed into fleshy steeples.
No matter--
I am with the saints.
I am in the saints:
St. Walt of New York
St. Mary of Providence
St. Billy of the Catskills.
I am the whirling dervish
whose snapping blanched vestments
spin between their lines.
I am the sword of the spirit:
The razor’s edge of my haiku
flashes too close for most.
Hallelujah to the words!
Hallelujah to the breaks!
Hallelujah to the
enjambments,
the stops.
See me slip straight through--
See me slide through the happy fingers of God.
See how I become the altar?
See how these saints rest their heads
on my wild breastplate of righteousness?
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It is enough today
to feel the brackish sting
in the slice,
the barnacle left
on your thumb
and to rinse
the dagger board with cold water
from the old well.
The little sloop
of your life is sailing,
bone in her teeth,
towards a coordinate
whose points are these:
Drunken sailors
whose names you don’t know
will unmoor
the lines linking
your spirit to bone by pulling
them—
imperceptible thread.
Your liver, kidneys, pancreas
will nestle down into
the warm bed
of your intestines while
the limpid telltale
of your breath
quivers on the mast.
Your lungs--
now glossy pink buoys
soon enough
will become empty gray nets
whispering only this
O
Your intrepid
right eye will close
for the passage
battening down
each upper lash with its
shipmate below.
The left eye
always autonomous
will enjoy her last
total eclipse
as your fingers seek
the cool harbor
of your palm.
Deep in the hull
you will not hear the
moan of a mother
as she launches
a vessel from the
dark sluice of her sea,
instead
each cell will huddle together
to quietly consider
itself for the first time.
Some will remember
how the catfish
mouthed the air when
you plucked it onto the bow
or the shell of the
crab as it brightened under
your boil.
Still, they will
keep you company
as your body
gently slides under
a blanket of ocean
under the skin of stars
whose names you cannot
fathom forgetting
that nevertheless
will silently
slip your mind.
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