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  William Taylor, Jr.

  Test Subject

  My friend is a poet

  which is to say

  he is egocentric

  half insane

  and has no money.

  He finds me at the bar

  begs a drink and

  sits down at my table.

  He sips a bit

  from a glass of whiskey

  sets it down

  hard upon the wood

  and says,

  I have decided

  as soon as they finish

  building that

  suicide

  fence on the

  golden gate bridge

  I will be the first

  to try it out.

  Either I'll be dead

  or at least they'll know

  the damn thing works.

  He laughs

  and quickly finishes

  his drink

  before the bartender

  has the chance

  to kick him out

  for disturbing

  the paying

  customers.

  In Our Best Moments

  Some days

  I dearly want to fall in love

  with us again.

  And by us, I mean

  all of us.

  I want us,

  in our best moments,

  to be as beautiful

  as we are

  in photographs

  and in movies,

  as we are in books and magazines.

  I want us to be as beautiful

  as we are in memories

  and dreams

  when we are

  no longer here.

  Some days

  I still like to imagine,

  for the briefest of moments

  we can all be

  as beautiful in life

  as we are in death.

  The Heat

  It was a strangely hot

  day in San Francisco

  and I stretched out in the cool

  grass of the park with a

  cheap six pack

  along with all the others

  who had nothing

  better to do.

  The feel of the sun

  the grass

  and the cold

  cold beer

  was as good as anything

  the world had to offer.

  A shirtless man

  not much older than myself

  sat down beside me.

  He said nothing

  and I said nothing

  and we sat that way

  for a while.

  I've been sober for ten days,

  he finally said,

  and I don't much see the point.

  I smiled a bit

  in reply.

  Mind if I have one of those,

  he asked, motioning

  toward the beer.

  I nodded and handed him

  a bottle.

  He popped the cap and took a long drink.

  It's good, he said.

  Indeed, I replied.

  The heat, he continued,

  makes it hard

  to do anything.

  But then I guess

  that's life,

  all you can do

  is relax a bit

  and wait for it

  to pass.

  The heat, I asked,

  or life?

  Whichever.

  Don Winter

  Buffing

  I buffed a floor

  at Wanda’s Grill and the buffer hit

  a slick spot, went gazooming like a kid

  spinning to be dizzy and kicked

  my balls. But no, I squealed like a hog,

  oh goddamn but no. All boss did

  was put ice down there real fast

  to get the heat out.

  He said I might be a eunuch

  in at least my right nut

  and don’t forget to fill out

  this accident report. After work,

  I went to Tintop Tavern

  and said to my girl,

  Here sit in my lap.

  Nothing would go down nor come up.

  She couldn’t make it, neither.

  Someday right soon, she said,

  there’s just gonna be

  a lil’ piece of your ass left.

  She was drunk as a hoot owl.

  Pabst on tap.

  Your mouth’s runnin’

  Like a whippoorwill’s ass

  in chokecherry season.

  I picked a cue

  and leaned. The eight ball wobbled

  like a thrown wheel

  and scratched.

  Lonesome Town

  “Andy stole my cherry

  on a toothpick

  & swallowed it whole,”

  she sd. I was out

  of the army a couple weeks,

  madly in lust. “Now Andy’s gone,

  no one can say where,

  otherwise I wouldn’t be dancing

  in this shithole.” She smelled

  like a dogpound in August, but

  she had a wad of bills

  the size of a sandwich. Had a snake

  tattooed around her ankle,

  pierced nipple & that edgy, unreachable

  disinterest I couldn’t

  get enough of.

  Two hundred for the night, two bones

  from her dealer later, we jumped

  into a Checker cab.

  Back in my room,

  The dope dropped my head

  Like a tulip.

  She cleaned me out.

  “Ants,” she sd.

  next day at the club,

  “people are ants,”

  lifted her feet & stomped

  them down. Next morning, I started begging

  my way back to my folk’s house

  in Bumfuck, USA.

  At The Tavern

  a man slips

  into his seat

  with a sigh

  like an accordion

  folding into its case

  The Tacoma Tavern

  is drunk with rain.

  And our tables are careless

  with empty bottles, cigarette ash.

  And we run our fevers

  up over a hundred

  arm wrestling our motorcycle buddies,

  drinking pitchers on one breath

  for a dollar. And we try to drink enough

  to lose our names.

  And we make up stories to fit

  the bad things. By turns hero and victim.

  And the waitress acts vaguely in love

  with each man. And the need for touch

  is a razor-toting, cuss-tongued bad ass.

  And the best sex rises from vacancies:

  divorces, failed jobs, incarcerations.

  And the closing time door flings open

  like a warrant.

  And the land tears away from us

  and slides off the horizons.

 

  The publisher would like to thank the following publications and their numerous, insightful editors for first printing some of the included work:

  3rd MUSE, 5AM, AMERICAN STANDARD, ANTIPATICO, BLACK ACE, BLUE COLLAR REVIEW, BLINDMAN’S RAINBOW, THE CENTRIFUGAL EYE, DEEP CLEVELAND JUNKMAIL ORACLE, DEVOUT MAN’S LATE NIGHT PRAYER, FIGHT THESE BASTARDS, FREE VERSE, GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM DHARMA, JOEY AND THE BLACK BOOTS, KICKASS REVIEW, THE LAUGHING DOG, LEGAL STUDIES FORUM, LUMMOX JOURNAL, MASTODON DENTIST, MY FAVORITE BULLET, NERVE COWBOY, NEW YORK QUARTERLY, THE ORANGE ROOM REVIEW, OUTLAW MAGAZINE, PLAINSONGS, THE PLANET E’S ZINE, POETIC INHALATION, PRESA: PRESS, QUERCUS REVIEW, REMARK., RIGHT HAND POINTING, ST. VITUS, SLIPSTREAM, THE STINGING FLY, STRAIGHT FROM THE FRIDGE, TAMAFYR MOUNTAIN POETRY, TAPROOT LITERARY REVIEW, TEARS IN THE FENCE, VIS-A-SEPTIC, WISCONSIN POET’S CALENDAR, WHEELHOUSE POETRY, WORDS DANCE, THE WORMWOOD REVIEW, X MAGAZINE, and
ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE

  -and as broadsides, included in chapbooks, or other various ephemera from-

  BOTTLE OF SMOKE PRESS, GREEN BEAN PRESS, GUNCH PRESS, LIQUID PAPER PRESS, RANK STRANGER PRESS, ROSE OF SHARON PRESS, SACREMENTO FREE PRESS, SHELF LIFE PRESS, and SUNNYOUTSIDE

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