Ellen Taylor

Here they come, the mourners Along the streets of Jaroujiji, no stranger to slaughter. They are black and slow, and silent too: No joy through tears, No second line for them, But the gagging, unspeakable Stab of child death, With its thousands of Tiny shrouds, And the women from the hills have made paper children […]

This morning , Olive-sides was gone: Bare the fir’s thin finger Where he would stand to greet the dawn… Today, no herald singer! Has he been counseled by a star? Or sensed the shrinking day? Recalled the walking trees, afar Along the Mamore? Farewell then, heartiest of birds! Take care with winds and moons! Come, […]

All Hallows Eve! The sun, Descending into a pyre of branches, becomes a Jack o’Lantern And, bidden, they spring up on the dark roads Steps, and windows across the dimming land. Look! Inferno is in their eyes. Irony is on their lipless, pillared grins. And see the Dead! Crouching like cats In the adjacent blackness, […]

A tribute to KMUD and local radio As BBC expounds on nukes, low-yield Our hay truck lurches as we leave the field. A disc can launch them from the NATO ring Encircling our competitor. It’s spring. Ill-omened, like the dread two-headed calf Are infants suckled by Globemaster jets. And Service suicides are up by half! […]

A faithless comet promised luck To Bonaparte’s far-reaching eye. The wavering Creeks watched, thunderstruck, Tecumseh, pointing to the sky. Pantribalism! Slavs undone! The comet passed behind the sun. In his Pleasure Garden sits An old man, talking with a bird. Beyond the roses, Covid spits On the vast, unruly herd. Sounds of the Space Force […]

Without, the land still flows with blood, A likeness of my day: Earth’s creatures moan, in fire and flood And God must look away. But here, my vagrant spirit might Draw in the crystal air And mark, in music’s purest light The toad, the sheep, the hare. This is not my century! Sin’s stain has […]

Eureka’s sky does ominous so well! The unswerving day makes orderly retreat Down C Street, where mean hubcaps cast a spell From 101, subwoofers on the beat. Around the world the headlines bask like snakes And barely give a rattle as we pass. “It’s only politics, for heavens sakes And what’s that got to do […]

For Rick Park, in memoriam: a vilanelle The Earth looks on with burning eyes As into chaos, death and dark Her children break from Paradise While hungry planes transect the skies Her heedless children speed and park The Earth looks on with burning eyes As prophets mew their futile cries In empty theatres, spurned and […]

Words of Jose Antonio Rodriguez, sailor, who abandoned his ship, his Captain Don Bruno Hezeta, and his King, Charles III of Spain, on June 14th 1775 at Tsurai, now known as Trinidad, on the Pacific Coast of North America I sit upon this lofty rock, and mark My frigate, Santiago, set to sea. From far […]

Eve wept as up the Smith she strolled, But from each tear, a lily rose! The King’s touch turned his child to gold. Eden, perfect, we were told, But earthly lilies stand in rows… Eve wept as up the Smith she strolled. Dichloropropene fouls the cold Sea fog, that toward the school house blows! The […]