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Acuff, Gale |
Ahern, Edward |
Allen, R. A. |
Alleyne, Chris |
Andersen, Fred |
Andes, Tom |
Appel, Allen |
Arnold, Sandra |
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Ayers, Tony |
Baber, Bill |
Baird, Meg |
Baker, J. D. |
Balaz, Joe |
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Barker, Tom |
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Barry, Tina |
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Bayly, Karen |
Beckman, Paul |
Bellani, Arnaav |
Berriozabal, Luis Cuauhtemoc |
Beveridge, Robert |
Blakey, James |
Booth, Brenton |
Bracken, Michael |
Brown, Richard |
Burke, Wayne F. |
Burnwell, Otto |
Bush, Glen |
Campbell, J. J. |
Cancel, Charlie |
Capshaw, Ron |
Carr, Steve |
Carrabis, Joseph |
Cartwright, Steve |
Centorbi, David Calogero |
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Christensen, Jan |
Clifton, Gary |
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De Neve, M. A. |
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Dillon, John J. |
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Johns. Roger |
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Karl, Frank S. |
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Taylor, Richard Allen |
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Zumpe, Lee Clark |
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Atlas Yearns for
Retirement by Richard Allen Taylor
Zeus
sentenced me to hold up the sky, penance for my rebellion. Not satisfied, mortals added the world to
my burden. A god who willingly accepts responsibility,
I bear the globe without
rancor. I have a reputation, not merely a planet, to uphold. Men
named an ocean after me, sculpted my image with a sphere on my shoulders. So there it stays. In many
places, crowds marvel at my likeness: in Naples,
Melbourne, Rockefeller Center. I appear on the covers of map books in all major libraries and
bookstores. Online vendors offer a splendid variety
of figurines and other artistic
renderings of me. I hoped my load would lighten, as war and
cruelty abated. It grew
heavier. After rotator cuff surgery, I shifted all the weight to
one shoulder. I keep turning the world to keep the hot spots— Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan,
Ukraine, Somalia—from burning my neck. Finding a suitable
volunteer to replace me has gone nowhere. Many crave the glory, but no one wants the work.
Frown by
Richard Allen Taylor Your
influence is everywhere, like gravity tugging
at a cloud. You insist on appearing for every
missed train or mass murder. No tragedy big or
small can do without you. Upside-down lemon
wedge, you don’t even try to be radiant, but slip
easily into radiation, with a half-life of a hundred anchors. You
pull others into your swirling drain. Often seen abandoned in
cold streets, in rooms shrouded with closed curtains, you have
not yet spoken of your losses. You keep your silence
like taut lips beneath drooping mustaches.
Why is the Sky
Cerulean? by Richard Allen Taylor It’s complicated. When I was your
age, we called this
color (referring to the hue of clear April air) sky blue, but as poets aged, they longed
for a new, less ordinary blue,
and called it cerulean, replacing one cliché with another. But we always knew sky could be something
else, gray as a dirty vacuum cleaner
bag, or maybe onyx or obsidian at
midnight. At day’s end, you might see a sky streaked with rose-colored feathers. Always pulling down shades, we found inspiration from automobiles, whose blues were named
by marketing departments: Aegean, Nitrous, Artic. Blue Candy Metallic sounded nice but
couldn’t displace sky blue. For more, we found crayons labelled Pacific Blue, Denim, Wild Blue Yonder, Robin’s Egg, Cobalt, and Cornflower. If you’ll step into the bathroom, I’ll introduce you to my personal
suggestions for blue sky names: Shower Curtain Blue, Damp Towel Blue and my
favorite, Shaggy Toilet
Seat Cover Blue. But none of them got
enough votes. So, don’t blame me, but
that’s why the sky is cerulean.
Richard Allen Taylor
is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2023). His poems, articles and reviews
have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, and Aeolian Harp, among others. A Pushcart Prize
and Best of the Net nominee, Taylor formerly served as review editor for The Main Street Rag and co-editor of Kakalak.
After retiring from his business career, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing from
Queens University of Charlotte and now resides in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
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