TWO POEMS by Taylor Johnson
ROUNDTHEWAY
Overcast in the shadow of the capitol, the city is a lead song
sent up all night through populated air, capone smoke. A youngin sparks one, fires off
his hard-earned-steal steady cocked at the unanswering upthere. If there is anything past this blue
above West Virginia and Raum it’s a chorus of black boys chewing bullets with their gold fronts—
that’s alchemy. Everyone has someone to lose, just hours before: the ambulance’s red moan
across my window; one of the ladies on the stroll went into something tinted and low and
never came back. I leave my house for the first time in a week, grabbing at the nothing in my pants
to feel grounded, stealth; the whole hood lit under sodium light.
Behind the corner store where a lightbulb is out, a man holds another man in his mouth
unflinching in his hunger, stilling the man’s torso with his hand
as if lifted in praise, yes, the hand says: taken up with praise. The new year crawls
out the drain in front of them with the other roaches
I have no shoe with which to beat it back.
CONSIDER THE DEER
Consider the deer who, when I say “deer”, doesn’t know
whether or not I mean a single one, though there were two
dead and shiny with maggots on the side of the highway;
or, a group of them, always a bit lost
in the divided woods (blame our need to reach
or leave each other, faster).
Consider the deer that I saw dead
on the shoulder, midday mid-autumn,
whose neck in post-rigor mortis pining
broke itself again so that the head could face
the woods, the woods setting itself alight.
Oh, that I could turn and live again, the deer might say
recalling that one poet singing to himself, ruining the grass.
Consider that the deer, when called, won’t come alone
purely due to linguistic vagary. Who, like me, resists
the gesture toward singularity.
Call my name and the whole woods
rise up inside me. I is a plural state
of being. Consider the multitude
before my footfall; how I’m able to crane my neck back
see only myself
TAYLOR JOHNSON is proud of being from Washington, DC. They’ve received fellowships and scholarships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, Lambda Literary foundation, VONA, the Fine Arts Work Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. Their work appears in, or is forthcoming from, CALLALOO, the minnesota review, Vinyl Poetry, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere.
These poems require a deep engagement with language and meaning, particularly the concept of I is a plural state of being. It reminds me of the mental challenge of working through complex patterns. Sometimes I like to unwind with something like MeowdoKu Online Play after reading such intense work.
Taylor Johnson line about black boys chewing bullets with their gold fronts—that is alchemy from ROUNDTHEWAY is incredibly powerful and imaginative. It truly sparks the mind to visualize such a concept. I often wonder what images an Zeva AI Image Generator would create from such vivid descriptions.
I found the description of the deer turning its head to face the woods after death in CONSIDER THE DEER to be very striking. It made me think about how our bodies navigate the world, even in difficult circumstances. I have heard good things about try brace support from Mrjoint Brace for daily activities.
The imagery in these poems, like the dead and shiny with maggots deer or the lead song sent up all night, is incredibly vivid. It makes me think about how we capture and share such striking visual content. Tools like Heic to PDF are so useful for managing different image formats online.
The way Taylor Johnson explores the idea of a plural I in CONSIDER THE DEER is deeply thought provoking. I imagine preparing these pieces for publication requires careful formatting. Sometimes it helps to convert documents, and I know that Pdf To Markdown tools can be useful for that.