SYRINX

 

The radiator’s hard gills have balanced atop them a board for more counterspace, so my kitchen functions lavishly. Early beyond the window, where the sun skips leaf crests across the driveway, teenage vitality strolls to first period. I tell you this because when the morning’s coffee blooms in its grinder to an exhilirating shizz beating on my neck like a grasshopper, our purpled street bricks are lovely like they also needed permission for that. Taking two ways up the alder ridge, one when indomitable snowbanks still the usual narrow road, means I’ve heard the second most birdcalls of anywhere I’ve ever lived. I was about to try to tell you something about silence: that we must keep it a nest for those around, so a quiet morning keeps us lucid, restless. You touch my little mouth like an organ or a necklace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRISONERS

 

Reciprocal captor, human heart.

It matters where you’re standing,

we call this perspective and go

simple at one who quarries

themself: names, faces to ask

what does it tick for? How am I

strong? Eyes lifted on sky’s blue

nothingness, ask now, in fear

of your walls, if my face is among

these. I want to die making my

bed in the morning, before coffee.

Most won’t die full and I don’t wish

to either. Take the life of a mayfly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

TAYLOR MICKS is a writer from Columbus, OH living in Urbana, IL where he is completing an MFA at the University of Illinois. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have recently appeared in Vallum, Ninth Letter, DIAGRAM, The Dunes Review, and elsewhere.