Featured Poet Mervyn Taylor Assault On The Second Wall In terms of war, there is no second wall, But the mind second guesses itself Near the entrance, where a mine Has fallen into a child's hands. And she plays and sings, and calls Her mother's name before the explosion Rocks the blue building and sends The soldiers flying, guns drawn Towards the southern end of town Where the rumors have their enemies Sighted since Wednesday. Then One of them, exhausted by fear, leaning Against the samaan in the center Of the square, sees the little yellow ball Of cloth, hair and blood a woman holds Up, like an offering, and wearily He straightens, waving to his compatriots. Slowly they re-enter their squad room And slip their rifles to the floor, quietly, And close their eyes against the desert grit. © 2002 Mervyn Taylor ~ . Casualties In human terms, the cost is expensive. The earth will have to Dig in her purse like an old woman Or the butcher will take back his meat. Perhaps it is not so bad. She can wrap herself In leaves and eat the tomatoes That burst their thin skins. She can squat near palaces in cities built of her own clay. She can follow the armies that take her dirt To bury their dead. She can swallow her pride, Pockmarked and disguised as a refugee, She can sit in a camp. Or She can smile in the eye of one whose hobby Is astronomy, a pretty blue marble, Spinning with her sun and moon, sucking salt Through a wooden spoon. © 2002 Mervyn Taylor ~ . Magenta Moon by April the lake should be magenta, a word that allows you to laugh as you say it. by then you should have been there and back several times, so by now you're familiar with all the shades in between, the mountain reflected in the middle, the notes to the song returning birds add each day. now the breeze is steadily warmer, and your impatient face is dyed like an initiate's going to fulfill his pledge. except you are still, sitting at the edge of this bowlful of water, purple as the bruise he'll return with, the mark of his manhood your hand will soothe. © 2002 Mervyn Taylor ~ . The Monarch A butterfly swims among the plants In my house. It is a monarch that Must have followed me home from The country, in the pocket of a shirt. The fan of the elephant ear opens To hear it, above the din of summer In the early light of a Tuesday, My dream of you hardly over, clenched Like a Hong Kong pillow, tea unmade In the kitchen. The end of a season is Approaching, loves are ending in divorce And duty rosters are being posted, sternly, With lots of hammering. But the butterfly Flits in this new garden, affording me A new mystery. As a man curses sweetly Godammit under a Mack truck's squeal, The croton and the ivy come to me Like children, and I must think fast, for The day is growing older by the minute, And this species is fatally sensitive to cold. © 2001 Mervyn Taylor ~ . Till Tomorrow This is a wish for kibbutzes To find a place no one would dispute, A longing For Palestinians to feel peace Between their toes flowing as Freely as sand For the morning to have a dawn Creep over the trellises like glories Normal and everyday For hearts to heal soon after They're broken, and bodies to recover From strokes without dragging For time to wait a minute While the bullets go off course And give everyone second chances For gracious answers to insults For a chair when waiting is important For a house when the backdoor closes For elephants to trumpet and Let us know they are coming, for The flood to recede before the snake Hides in the monsoon mud, For the highest hill in the land To save the last people on earth From fighting any longer, from Believing that the stars belong only To the ones with long arms, a longing For the current to bring us back To shore, lights glowing from windows, Not from the wreckage, of our lives. © 2001 Mervyn Taylor ~ . Ways           for V In myriad ways my lover Comes to me. As an heiress, All her family's baubles Strapped to her like beautiful Bombs. Yesterday she detonated Her mother's pearls. Or like a sapodilla, bursting Warmth and sweetness, fuzzy To the touch, becoming one with The couch we lay on, the antique Arm of my player lifting and Clicking and playing again. Sometimes she blares like The horn of an impatient motorist Under my window that sounds As if it were inside my head, when She wants me to move and I'm Frozen in the traffic of ideas. And then she can be truly The female of the species, upwind, Her back to me, knowing Just what she is doing, stamping Her foot, her tailbone The most alluring art in history. And I study all her poses: As she approaches perfection, as She strays so far from it she's A lump, as the hand that molds her Goes to work again, and I marvel, Pieces of clay flying everywhere. © 2001 Mervyn Taylor ~ . ~ Mervyn Taylor, a native of Trinidad, West Indies, is the author of two volumes of poetry, An Island of His Own (Junction Press, 1992) and The Goat (Junction Press, 1999). He is an instructor in the Writing Program at the New School for Social Research Eugene Lang College in Manhattan and also teaches writing and journalism at the High School for Enterprise, Business and Technology in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. A former New York Foundation for the Arts award winner, Mr. Taylor's poems are included in the anthologies, Bum Rush the Page, Giant Talk, and Rock Against the Wind. Journals where his work has appeared include Antillea, the Harlem Arts Journal, Pivot, St. Ann's Review, Steppingstones, and Sulfur. Mr. Taylor recently read his work on the air for Pacifica Radio. Other recent appearances include: the Brooklyn Spring Poetry Fair sponsored by the Brooklyn Borough President; the Brooklyn Poet's Day Reading at Brooklyn College; and Lincoln Center Outdoors. He is at work on a new manuscript, tentatively titled, The Careening Poui. Note: Mervyn Taylor's poems appear by express permission of the author. The unauthorized reproduction or use thereof in the U.S. or elsewhere is prohibited. The magazine home page and Masthead contain statements on copyright protection under domestic and foreign statutory and common law and on the consequences of infringement; by this reference, the same are hereby incorporated as though fully set forth herein. [Eds.]