Taylor Graham

SLEEPING WITH THE KISSING BUG
(Triatoma protracta)

I wake to the itch of whatever
visits our sheets. You’re wrapped up
mummy-safe. One more kiss
could kill you.

We live in the packrat’s den,
parasitic heap of papers
and old clothes. Does one become
sensitized

to the heaviness of living?
Does habit sting in the dark,
until finally it kills us? Or is it
our own metabolic vitals,

protein turning deadly
on a whim? So unpredictable,
this iteration of life. We speak
of allergies like a season

of inconvenience. We bless us
as we sneeze. But there’s an assassin-
bug that’s set to prick your veins.
I wake to anything that moves.



CONVERSATIONS WITH THE DOG

I stroke her fur

till I feel that tingle-
static of infinitesimal threads
that lace all things.

I touch the chair
for grounding
then begin again.

Deep wells into earth,
her eyes ask what I couldn’t
answer in my language.

The air shines.



MIGRATION

No one goes in the old man’s room,
anymore, the door is closed. He lies
in hospital these four seasons
with open mouth and eyes quite shut.
It’s foggy now, November,
and the house is silent

except overhead and out of sight
the wild geese are honking south,
their communal lonely call
that magnifies the stillness.
Oh, they know the ways
of leaving.


Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in International Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she's included in the anthology, California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.

 Current Issue:
October 2007

Melinda Blount
Frank DeCanio
Bobbi Dykema
Taylor Graham
John Grey
Don Kloss
Alicia Matheny
Pam Pignataro
Jeremy Rich
Bill Roberts
Bethany Rountree
Tom Sheehan
Kelsey Upward

Home