Author: Janet Taliaferro
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Sunday Punch
I The line dividing her forehead between green eyes sharp as a hatchet cut off the words. I could not hear her scold could not answer. She never knew how I too grieved the loss of a red patent purse with one buffalo nickel inside. II The Sunday I lost my red purse I could…
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By the Time I Get to Phoenix
WANTED TO BUY: Mercedes 300SL-Gullwing. For further information, call 516-5… Carmine DeSilva’s coffee cup covered the rest of the phone number, but the Long Island area code caught his attention. He stared at the newspaper. Reading the want ads had become a habit with him. It prolonged the morning ritual of silence, the only time,…
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No, Yeats
the center holds eternal eye of the hurricane vortex of the maelstrom infinite calm seen only in the gyre the movement around it sensed, uncontrolled feared and called random passion and conviction pull reason round a drunken spiral the blood is in the turning not in the pregnant limpid shape of silence compassed by jeweled…
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Respect the Sun, Follow the Moon
The sun, steady in its season warms seed, breeds the mayfly ripens grain and dries the foal. It rises daily to show its faithful head earlier in summer longer to bed in winter bright faced or cloud veiled rarely eclipsed by the changeable moon it pursues its duty faithful as the farmer dedicated as the…
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The Doll House
Fine furniture made in the late years between World Wars and marked “Germany” sits on tiny needlepoint rugs Mother made one summer. Rearranged first by me and then by the careful fingertips of daughter and granddaughters, miniature dishes and lamps have lost their tags and stamps that said “Made in Japan.” Two weeks after the…
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What the Water Knows
Surprised by a rogue cloud on a sunny day rain splotches my shirt and tosses huge drops on my hair. I turn my face up to catch sweet water in my mouth and think about the water bearers. For me there were five who came from water to teach me about poetry and spirit. A…