Absence, help me name the trapped bird in my swollen throat, trilling a tiny green aria into this sterilized air.
It’s been days since I’ve eaten anything with edges. A dry wad clogs my neck’s corridor. I’m waiting to be seen
in the same boundless beige linoleum hall where I ambled next to my father’s squeaky-wheeled hospital bed.
On the gurney next to mine a silver-haired woman phones a son to feed her cat and fetch a magnifying glass.
We chat about hummingbirds, once thought magic until scientists diagnosed their tachycardic wing flutter.
We chat about the fifth season, human-made, overlapping summer, wolves fleeing forests ablaze, flames biting like tiny mouths.
My new friend wails when she wets herself. No one comes. Fever rises. Heatwaves on a runway. I think I hear her die. Quiet moan at 3:15 AM. Empty skin. Atmosphere without an earth.
Gordon Taylor
Gordon Taylor is a queer, emerging poet who walks an ever-swaying, braided wire of technology and poetry. A 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in Narrative, Cincinnati Review, Rattle Poet’s Respond, Poet Lore, Palette Poetry and more. Gordon is the winner of the 2026 Ellis prize in Poetry from New Ohio Review. He writes to invite people into a world they may not have seen.
