Prospect Hill
Sprawling walnut & blue spruce colonnaded the northern turn we would walk through unendingly slatted light coffees in-hand the freshest from up thirteenth ave after the long nightshift you always just finished still wearing scrubs you held your tongue you said when the doctor held you like coffee I thought twice over everything I thought twice over everything I thought insecurity was the engraver beetle that stripped Denver alive heartwood-to-husk & only Lola with her tail wagging would gimme paw
Leland Blue
Law made you you for us who knew you in law practice the same as your legal name who knew esquire rhymed with father-in-law it doesn’t try as you might were you more than a memory of one summer on the lake wading clearest of clear water when you plucked from your reflection a Leland blue that slag-glass of self you noticed you showed us
Questions for the Editor
Do we still peddle that sensational class, some hand-me-down advice: murder your darlings? My shoot-em-up country become a mass photo shoot instead? Wouldn’t it be nice if meaning were man, if the Word truly were messiah & not just Microsoft Word – everyone & everything disguised in silence rather than messages no one understands? Why, why murder our darlings when we can stare at their beautiful faces?
About the author
Taylor Strickland is a poet and translator from the United States. He is the author of Commonplace Book and Dastram/Delirium,(both with Broken Sleep Books). Recently, his poem ‘The Low Road’ was adapted by American composer, Andrew Kohn, and performed in Orkney. His poem ‘Nine Whales, Tiree’ is in the process of being adapted to film with filmmaker Olivia Booker and composer Fee Blumenthaler. He is currently a doctoral candidate in literary translation at the University of Glasgow, and he lives in Glasgow, with his wife, Lauren.
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