January 2018
A former copywriter who found her true calling writing deathless advertising jingles for AM radio, I am also a former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin; the author of six poetry collections, the most recent of which is titled Step on a Crack (Kelsay Books, 2016); and an Associate Editor for Third Wednesday poetry journal. My work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Poetry, Able Muse, Light Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, and Measure, and I also served for five years as a regular poetry columnist for The Writer magazine. I currently live in Madison, Wisconsin with my poet-husband Dave Scheler, where I continue to write, teach, and hobnob with some extraordinary poets who also call Wisconsin home.
After the midnight phone call
does she still have to
get dressed, put on
her shoes, tie them,
pull a comb through
her hair coat, coat
still have to fumble
for the car keys
shove them into
the ignition with their
familiar scrape money,
has she brought any
money? does she stop
for the red light or are
dispensations made
will she get there
to find she’s dreaming
the clock spinning back
the way it does in
the movies and she
is back in her bed
again oh God
and nobody will be
bleeding, the heavy
doors of the hospital
not be opening
onto fluorescent
chaos and the end
of the world?
Night Songs
Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn,
Claude Debussy— when you woke up at night
(synapses snapping wildly) did you write
your nocturnes then? And was the woozy moon
spreading its silver fingers over yours,
convincing you to give in to your will,
your High Romantic fantasies, until
the swollen stars were winking like voyeurs?
How intimate were you with the coiled wires
underneath the piano’s lid— as note
by note you wove a lovely antidote
for our enormous, orbiting desires?
Did you suspect how much it would be worth
to bring one moment’s peace to this old earth?
©2018 Marilyn L. Taylor
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