Paige Taggart
Pin the Tail on the Date
conquistador hop on the ferry with me to
be taken across to that brightly lit island
where Saturday’s hat is all hopeful and
the battalion is waiting for us to join
their coupledom we can play music
outside say there are socks for sale and
spooley winter gear that you can wear
cradled into the night when the water
is glass we have hands inside each
other’s coats trying to make this the
right feeling how hard to trust maybe
it’s intuition that says bombs away
because you don’t want me to see
anything bleeding in your art that is
for sale inside this book it’s all dead
in there I hope I stand a chance
Certain Plea
I some times think
you’re so pretty in
the dark more adept
than me I can tell
under your eyes like
luscious skin seems
he’d appear quite
different in close
contact where stars
make outside brighter
than with out quiet
mouth sleep lipped into
my cheek something miss-
spelled is still beautiful
besides it’s only half
wrong and the other
maybe better than
coming from the
heirs our language
chief now show me
the quiet back yard
With Standing Ovation
you come inside my trailer with a
winnowing foam of gladness it’s
hopefully never baby bucket grain
prisming shimmer sadly behind my
curtain if underneath the chaff I
might take the air more as a field
for my body that velour crutch of
skin that you have hugged tightly
besides in my dreams there is always
a deep well that as you crawl
down it gets darker but the closer
you approach this darkness the
more light in truth it has to offer
because once directly faced with
the complexity of being covered
nightly then there’s an empathetic
spark lit by the wheel rubbing the
rope to pull the bucket up that has
been filled with the water found
in this darkness you spoon me
CECILLE BALLROOM: Chartered biography. Ran through the land in homemade legs from a sewing doctor. It was tunnels of dream that brought me here. The tunnels led me here and I had no choice. Entry, reentry, fall-out, waterfalled down into granite, sleep dust filled my eyes. I aided the peculiar noise in the back of my head that was telling me to read written words. I collected twenty-mattresses and put man dolls on them. I Said, hello, how are you? I’ve come here to read poems for your night. My amazing autobiography shot through the air. Making up for the past years of having crammed west coast style into a shorthand envision of my future, didn’t know New York could spawn prolific profiling. The air-quality is another big change. I dress into a costume made up of my body; the person attached to the clothes holds other things inside. My eyes are hazel confetti. I read words–– clinging them into a sphere made imaginable. I rock the vaudeville brigade. I make many rooms of laughter fall out of your teeth. I transpire a theme with abundant verse, poured through whiskey. I never pun on anyone’s true wisdom or brush their senses off. There’s no telling how this affords another great pleasure, the way my words could coax your drum. I sail into a misty ballroom with shoestring flowers and a lamppost over my head.
PAIGE H. TAGGART lives and works in a house, in Brooklyn. She has an e-chapbook out with Scantilly Clad Press, Won't Be a Girl. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the Agriculture Reader, La Petite Zine, My Name Is Mud, Blazevox, Ditch, Elimae, Robot Melon, Caketrain, Critphoria, EOAGH, Sawbuck, and Eleven Eleven. You can listen to her reading one of her poems online at Weird Deer. She makes jewelry and you can find her stuff online: mactaggart.etsy.com.
