postpandemicphoenix

By Wilson R.M. Taylor

The city is ripe like a plum to be plucked,
juices moving down the avenue, everyone
squeezed and certain except the standoffish
and bemused cigarette-smoking old women, 
heads clouded halos. It’s not the same,

they seem to whisper,
no matter how you convince yourself nothing has changed
(you, who just this morning sent three emails in the nude).

This city is a bough, an orchard-laugh
in the company of fallen angels: man,
says the trombone player to hide the blues,
the work of life is getting ready to die.

It’s not the same:
dendritic white ash moves through
your memory now.

But clear sky or no
I would wait forever for five minutes with you
because that ash has always been moving. We are not Pompeiians,
we are Romans of this age, our great lead-lined
decadence imploding beautifully.

And the juice runs all around me
and I am nothing without you.

Wilson R. M. Taylor is a poet living in New York City. His work has appeared in The Scarlet Leaf Review, Literary Yard, and Every Day Fiction, among other places; recently he was a winner of San Antonio’s National Poetry Month Ekphrastic Contest and MindPath’s inaugural poetry contest. For more of his work, please visit wilsontaylorwrites.wordpress.com and/or shoot him a note; maybe he’ll write you a poem.