Taylor Emily Copeland

February 6, 2013

I would have taken you out for
your first legal drink,
let you drain a pitcher down
to the last bit of foam lingering
around the bottom. Watched you
dancing by yourself, danced with
you while you stumbled over your
uncooperative feet, held your hair
back while you heaved everything
out of your stomach in the back
parking lot of some dive bar
in Bristol, draped your arm over
my small shoulder and quietly
sneaked you into the house while
you giggled and told me you loved me.
I would have made pancakes for you
in the morning, brewed a full pot
of coffee, given you a hug when you
stumbled out from beneath your covers.



Of renewal

Familiar ache -
it pulses in my belly.

Rub my soft flesh,
ease the deep sting
of loss, of love.

My legs, stiff and extended
measure the distance,
my toes, a compass needle

your guide back to my side,
my skin.

A face on a screen
cannot consume me -

I speak only to seduce.




Sitting with Q, waiting

I want to tell her that
it is not a big deal when
they find that festering
intrusion beneath her skin,
that nothing can slow down
a girl who flips a middle
finger in the face of disease.
I have never seen her cry,
not as children, or as teens
until now, until we sit in
the square office that smells
of desperation and hopelessness.
She asks,
"Do you think it spread?"
"What were you thinking when
your heart gave out?" I tell her
that our blood is stronger than
that mass in her breast, wipe
the wet smudges of eyeliner away
from the top of her cheeks.


Taylor Emily Copeland is a poet from Eastern Pennsylvania. Her poems have appeared in Hobo Camp Review, Thick With Conviction, Chantarelle's Notebook, Drown In My Own Fears, Work to a calm and The Active Voice. In 2010, she was nominated twice for Best of the Net and also was nominated for Best of the Web. She loves the band Paramore, reads obsessively, likes pink things, drinks too much coffee, drives aimlessly and falls in love too easily. She is unashamed of all of it.

Current Issue:
June 2014

Taylor Emily Copeland
Steve DeFrance
Mitchell Grabois
John Grey
Richard Luftig
Mary McCall
Simon Perchik
Tim Pilgrim
April Salzano

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