To be poet is to be thief,
and whereof one cannot speak
thereof one must be silent,¹

so here I spill stolen goods
to write around the hole’s edge.

Its contents must remain unknown.
He does not know what he is lacking.²

My eyes dart in the dialogue,
to yours, to the photograph askew:
the frame contains the man in movement
his edges blurred.

The hands that reach,
their tips pink with touch,
the accent of unknowing.³

Hope runs amok in the now:
hope that we
might stumble in the same stream,
its waters made different in the coursing
through our gaps.

Our stereoscope affords us
glimpses of godlike delight —
that lack of lack;

and yet, a clearer picture
of the peril that comes
with living beyond the end
of one’s myth.⁴

I make a metaphor out of you,
wrench and rive it open,
reach for what we dare not name.

Our holes aren’t made of the same stuff.
That we cannot appease Aristophanes.

That idle languishing,
faulting the bulb for its burning,
the river for its churning.

To give voice to love long lain quiet
is to bay uselessly at the sky
like hounds unheard by Ganymede
who waits in what’s beyond us all:
that immoveable line between mortal and divine.

I have heard
the sweet and deadly music of time⁵
in the buckle of a cicada’s tymbal:
that sheath of ribs responsible
for all that clicking, ticking.

If anything is heard
in the heavens, it is that,

but I am no god.
The peaches, once canned
seek to suspend the sun.

I have seen the knife-like beauty of the morning⁶
but only after desires as round as peaches
bloomed in me all night.⁷

Poor Heraclitis
spent all that time at the edge
only to have his river
render
his every thought
a paradox.

There is the lover, the beloved,
and the space between,⁸
and time is but meaning
imposed upon motion⁹
the hopeless now
uninhabitable.

Enfeebled by my own grasp,
I can no longer
fill it.

Every river has a mouth
and every hole an edge,
and mine is as round as god

and so I will comb the bank
for fragments to shore against my ruins.¹⁰

How can I go on this way?
And how can I not?¹¹

We will spread ourselves lengthwise
over the river,
from
mouth to mouth to mouth.

 

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
2. Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference 
3. Jacques Lacan, Book VIII: Transference 
4. Anne Carson, Red Doc>
5. Martha Nussbaum, Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Voice of Nature
6. Martha Nussbaum, Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Voice of Nature
7. Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
8. Anne Carson, Eros, the Bittersweet
9. Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
10. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
11. Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh

 

 

___________________

Nicky Taylor is a journalist, researcher and poet based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. In 2021, their debut chapbook, Foul Mouth, was published by bird, buried press. In 2022, they were named Student Journalist of the Year by the Canadian University Press. Their work has appeared in Maisonneuve Magazine, The Eastern Door, Vermin Magazine, Arthur Newspaper, and now, GLYPHÖRIA.