The Landfills of Heaven are clean as icebergs. There are Everests of wedding rings and silver bedsteads that sing like tuning forks. There are green, translucent hills made of empty champagne bottles and crystal flutes waiting for the blue lips of ghosts. There’s a hum marking the perimeter, the low, sustained notes of cello strings, guitars and violins, teased from the hands of their keepers. … Continue reading Two poems by Maria Taylor
Tracing Orion You were already fully grown and frolicking with lovers under the stars, around the time when I used my rough book to trace constellations at night. I’d recite names like magic spells: Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. The hunter’s body in space impossible to touch. You in the middle of nowhere fumbling with straps in the dark. Me in a box room. Star-gazing. (first … Continue reading Three poems by Maria Taylor
In Love First, dream yourself into a mid-terrace let flowers grow inside your head. Rethink the kitchen, see a dining table tangled with jasmine, petals over tired pine. Where once you were arm-deep in sink grease watch holy roses grow from a plughole as swallowtails escape from a cutlery drawer and fly up to a room, not quite your own. Here are laelia, risen … Continue reading Two poems by Maria Taylor
Mr. Hill For Patricia For a while he’s gone back to his first wife, who’s decided to keep him on a mantelpiece with mouth-blown vases on either side. It means she’s had to speak to his mistress. They have more in common than she realised, but wonders if her toenails are still painted red. No one is quite sure where to scatter him, not … Continue reading A poem by Maria Taylor
