Flying Island

Emily's Chamber by Jo Barbara Taylor                           after lines by Sarah Edwards Emily enters the evening garden like a tide that slips onto shore, awakens sensual senses, reaches beyond today, erases yesterday, seeks evidence for tomorrow. Her way of being in a world of interlopers, and at low-tide, she leaves, retreats from the garden shore to sanctuary. In her room, plain like a cotton bedsheet, she writes, taut words tumbling smooth onto white linen paper, tucked and folded in. Jo Barbara Taylor lives in North Carolina, but is an Indiana farm girl at heart. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines, anthologies and online. How to Come and Go (Chatter House Press 2016) is her fourth book. She leads poetry-writing workshops through Duke Continuing Education, chairs the workshop committee for the North Carolina Poetry Society, ...

A Wordy Sonnet by Jo Barbara Taylor He finds his words in ink drawn with pen, wordy landscape by Monet, still life of Vermeer, a portrait painted in wordspin wording the scene with pigment, palette knife. Iamb here, trochee there, word- smithing watchwords for a poet's eye and ear, the writer draws his sword, fences. Verb and noun, footwork to word the image clear. Jousting beckons the word-shy muse. The poet sketches, wordplay in tone and shade, discovers rhyme and meter in crossword clues. Words become ballad, ode, aubade, or sonnet, fourteen strokes, words emerging. The work of art comes in rewording. Jo Barbara Taylor lives in North Carolina, but is an Indiana farm girl at heart. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, magazines, anthologies and online. How to Come and Go (Chatter House Press 2016) is her fourth book. She leads poetry-writing workshops through Duke Continuing Education, chairs the workshop committee f...

Dig by Jo Barbara Taylor       Cathédrale Sainte-Bénogne       Dijon,France Outside the simple sacred church, an open pit. My first archaeological dig. July sun throws shadow deep in the hole. Diggers in khaki shorts and dungarees pick, sift, brush in consecrated dirt with tiny tools like children ply to shape a sandcastle on shore. They squat, sit, kneel, pick, sift, brush, and wash. Each exposed layer, down, down to 500 A.D. visible as circles on a stump, tells the story of basilica, abbey, cathedral in dust, shards of pottery, in bones. The sweet smell of sautéed onion floats from a window across the street, anoints the pit. When evening shadow darkens the pit and the aroma of butter and onion reaches the sixth century, the pickers and sifters climb the scaffold, pass each layer of the plot, all the while adding a new chapter. Now I am a character in the story, doing the same. Jo Barbara Taylor ...

Tintinnbulation by Jo Barbara Taylor I Wind chimes wrinkle into timely pitch to report a windwhipped stir in the air. (you've heard them tingle)  When the tornado trespassed in Richmond,  (those days before sirens) the chimes on Main Street screamed and one block over, dead silence.     II The carillon holds dear twenty-three bells to give us this day every morning, (you've heard them quiver) our matins in precise pitch tuned (morning reminder) to stir a sleeper or a sinner, soothe the souls of the dead. III In Scranton church bells speak our daily bread. When the Marias toll, (you've heard them shudder) Aunt Lizzie chants Hark, hark, the dogs all bark.   (call to confession) Repentance digs in hard coal, lungs of the living, legacy of the dead. IV Winter, sleigh bells answer the call of school bells and cowbells, rhythms of daily habits (you've heard them shiver) when snow cloaks the p...

Lake Lure by Jo Barbara Taylor   Sunrise greets the sleeping tarn, quiet in the lap of mountain mist. Mourning doves hold their sighs, and antelope tiptoe across tawny meadow, smooth like thatch, muffled with dew. As the play of dawn stirs passion in those depths, water will lick the banks like a cow washing her calf to life.   When the calf bawls it first maaw, (and so it is, you know, the stir within each of us) the antelope thunder over the land, doves croon their distant lament, (draw us into day) and ripples begin to skim the surface of the mountain mere. Bio: Jo Barbara Taylor lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, grew up in Indiana, and remains an Indiana farm girl at heart. Her poems and academic writing have appeared in journals, including Tipton Poetry Journal and Inwood Indiana , magazines, and anthologies. She leads poetry workshops for the North Carolina Poetry Society and OLLI through Duke Continuing Education. She has ...

Kiss Me As If It Were the Last Time by Jo Barbara Taylor Though Juliet loved Romeo, her heart's hope vanished with the dew and the dawn lark sang go, go, go hurry before the sky turns blue. Hours and fate waylaid her hallowed vow to remain one of two, ever true.           Hopeless, the brief romance that hovers           over storied, star-crossed lovers. Ilsa dropped into Rick's Café, and Sam sang the love song of Paris again. In one brief moment, she was larked away— you must remember this —along the Seine where she walked with Rick day after day. Ilsa left with longing she could not contain.           Futile, the sad romance that hovers           over tales of star-crossed lovers. In Rome a princess fell in with a hack while on holiday from the duty of a royal daughter. She r...

Concert at 2 A.M. by Jo Barbara Taylor In the deep of night, no moon, no streetlight, I hear thunder drumming, drumming far to the west as the percussionist tunes the tension of the tympani behind a black velvet curtain. The drape spreads and the pianist's arpeggio splashes like raindrops. The storm snares on a skylight washed in lightning and drowned in the pounding of drums, a string bass, the deep-caverned tuba, the moan of a trombone punctured by staccato yips of a cornet. The storm moves east as night moves west. Morning is rinsed in deep grays of wet concrete and rain clouds. The music fades as the orchestra sets up on a distant stage. I listen for the dissonance of tuning up,          the thrill of the overture,                   the assurance of harmony. Bio: Jo Barbara Taylor lives outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, grew up in In...

Gravel Road by Jo Barbara Taylor I remember how hard it is to drive in fresh gravel, to keep the tires straight. Front wheels dig for the weft of the road, back tires weave a wavy pattern      that shuttling sound how dust bloats up as a car trundles down the road, leaves you cloaked in dirty talcum powder, croaks a deep cough      that rasping sound how it is hard to walk in gravel, the clumsy road stretches ahead, no steady groove, you just slip-slide, roll with the rocks to balance,                that shifting sound I know rejiggering gravel, twisting stone under wheels. The grader guts through grit each week, the rattle of settling,                   that shuffling sound I remember the hope of a tarvey, black and smooth, to lay dust on a thirsty day, pave your way ...

Heathcliff and Catherine and All the Others By Jo Barbara Taylor I found an old letter in a library book, the stamp Brazilian, the missive in English, a feminine hand on monogrammed linen stationery, now yellowed. August 31, 1922 Dear Carlos—             I sit on the terrace—you can picture the emerald Atlantic and hear it slapping rocks below—my handkerchief close, for I will use it, I am sure, before I sign my name below. On the table, your favorite breakfast item—a chocolat éclair and your favorite relic, the rusty lock without its key.               The air is fever. My tears fall already like tropic rain. I say adieu. Please do not come again. I know you ask why. No answer I have is pleasing. I hold your heavy lock in my hand, consign it to my heart. I taste you in the delicate éclair, find you delicious. I glance through our time and smile. Yo...