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.
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.
