Feature image by Larry Fink. Declaration of Independence, Martins Creek, Pa., 1978. Gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 in. From the collection of the International Collection of Photography. Gift of Robert Pollak, 1986. © Larry Fink.

Listen:

We strung lights in the halls of Byzantium: cue the music, girls, it’s all in our heads, all in our heads. Trumpets skyward, you know about it, side eye, you know how goes silence in the rock-n-roll, that trance you spun wildly, tannest legs in the slant light, hard desert sun, a scooch right up to the brim. This is a plethora for your housewarming needs, welcome June, dead batteries, blue fish, here take her, full bowl you give your best lap in the car, live forever, every cricket drone the wheat field, how rough stock our mouths in the front seat were; never forget the day that breaks it different, no longer hold me up a parcel on the front porch, Metallica t-shirt, too much pomade, love regardless; river, honor, stockpile, arsenal, meat, blood, long-haired now in some big city, everything bluer, faces, yours, square through the jaw, bouncing with stride busy streets okay.

Shelly Taylor

Shelly Taylor is the author of two full-length poetry collections, Lions, Remonstrance (Coconut Books Braddock Book Prize, 2014) and Black-Eyed Heifer. Hick Poetics, co-edited with Abraham Smith, is recently released from Lost Roads Press (2015). Born in deep south Georgia, Taylor currently lives in Tucson.