Issue 4: Echoes

The Pretend Head

Gordon Taylor

& you walked backwards from your own story
an Epsom salt bath into Jason’s arms & he
withdrew from you sticky and sore & the smoke
recoiled to the pipe a crystal un-melted & blue
flame retracted into blow torch un-kissed & dressed  
you walked on tippy toes to his bare mattress 
as a boy Papa said you wore invisible stilettos
too femme in a tall ramshackle house & drafts
from century old windows & the breeze blew back
to the maple the letter where you came out returned
to sender sucked back to your brain Papa’s words
I hope you don’t turn toward what you fear  
a skin headed man with ginger beard
& tungsten gaze whose cruelty aroused
you wanted Jason’s gravel in your ear
& his hand on the back of your neck
as you walked from a pub where he rolled
up his sleeves to expose freckled arms & faded
sun tattoo there’s a purse in your mouth he lisped &
I’m an outlaw in combat boots screwing the system
& screwing you Jason sneered walking home
to the squat where he lived & bragged the key
to wisdom is licking the lips of hell until you can no
longer taste & as you walked backwards he swallowed
your name & you dropped to your knees

Gordon Taylor is a queer emerging poet who walks an ever-swaying wire of technology and poetry. A 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee, his poems have appeared in Narrative, Rattle Poets Respond, Nimrod, Arc, and more. Gordon was the winner of the 2022 Toronto Arts & Letters Club Foundation Poetry Award and a finalist in the 2023 Gival Press Poetry Award. He writes to invite people into a world they may not have seen.