Carey Taylor is a poet and Pushcart Prize nominee from Port Ludlow, Washington. Her poetry has appeared in Cirque, Clover: A Literary Rag, Off the Coast, Snapdragon, and others. She has a Master’s Degree in School Counseling, something that prepared her well for becoming a writer.

Sylvia Plath Watches a Young Woman in Checkout Line at Walmart

are you blue?

not like
egg of robin

blue-black blue
before heal of bruise

midnight
cave of bat

inky
of deepest ocean

carbon blue of knife
you slide between

leaving

and

gone

oh let me fill your cart with
what mine cannot hold—

cobalt of nebula

turquoise of Navajo

cornflower of child’s barrette

cerulean blue of sky
you reach for      after

coming

and

here

Thoughts Six Months After Trump Was Elected

At first they fed in multitudes,
from the high energy suet cube
hung in the Contorted Filbert.

Then came week
upon week
of 20-degree weather.

At the icy shoulder of road,
a Chickadee in daytime
torpor.

By the third week,
five feathered corpses
on frosted asphalt.

Who knew so many would not survive
that winter, next to the bay with its
foraging wetlands

or now, how much we need them,
to rise like Lazarus and tweet
their softest songs.

Treeline

He worries he won’t get a job
after four years of coding
in dark rooms for a degree so
fresh it hasn’t even been framed
properly. You want to tell him, as if he
were still a child and you his childhood
mother, that this is not the worst thing,
this lack of a job, because your inclination
is to problem solve, compile strengths, list
options. But before you can speak, he changes the topic,
shares he hiked the Cascades on a day so clear he saw
Hood, Adams, Mt. St. Helens—and then there you are, in the
summer after your first marriage ended, bagging mountain
after mountain, and how it was not in the moist lush of conifer
and fern, but at the wind-worn edge in scree and scraggly pine,
that you were able to see both peak and sky.

Blessing

Her mother’s voice
comes out of the ether
like a chariot headed for Rome.

I have something to tell you. Something splendid.

I know you think I’m prim,
that I always talk of sin,
but there was a time
I lived for shenanigans,
was wild to be shallow,
draped my breasts in silk,
never felt chagrined.

So,    you too,

should go

past the orchard

with its lemons and chickens

to where air is tang of oregano

and light

the scatter

of prism.

Port of Call Blues

On the boat
he never thought
about his children,
just wave
trough
current
endless horizon
sweet of Plumeria.

At the marina
dock lines
tied
he found them
waiting
on their bellies,
arms dangling
in the oily green,
fingers poking
sea anemones
that clung fast
to pilings,
as they now
attached to his legs,
where he felt
the heavy anchor
of their
tuna weight.

“Estuary, Bantry, Ireland”

Photograph: Diane G. Martin has published poetry, prose, and photographs in numerous literary magazines. Her photos have been exhibited in the USA, Italy, and Russia. She has participated in radio programs in the US and Russia, and has broadcast essays on Maine Public Radio.