Ken Taylor: Life Portrait

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

X from life portrait

before unfastening & echo
we find essence floating in the void.

in a two-place tie between observed
& unnerved light.

  a subject & a scheme
displaying our cloud of breath.

it is manifest to us that we as self
are the object of our gaze:

reading the prelude to a body
in colloquy with not yet saying.

& by a body we mean
suspect & untried integration.

we mean viscera & instinct
replying to how time binds,

like a frieze in shallow water
winding with aortal tones.

we wade into a tall unknown
toward the space of our seeming.

the prestige of the word
is a prearrangement of windows,

where we take irregular turns
inclined to brinks of our practice.

what’s prized is evident to us.
that it’s us we’re clearly expecting.

& before what’s said has taken shape,
parts shoot gaps in fingers

or present as malingering furls
smoothed to reach a sea change.

feeding forward the capacity to trap.
to seek the seeker that might be us.

lost in a knot as a manifold self
bound up in body-bound responses.

& by a body we mean the timing trick
of large-scale synchronicity.

we mean holding a polymodal blend
that vests before amorous describing.

we mean barring episodic cants
in a flair for the looking glass test:

the other’s flexing’s foundering’s
wonder touching undiscovered depth.

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Ken Taylor is author of "first the trees, now this" (2013), "dog with elizabethan collar" (2015), "self-portrait as joseph cornell" (2016) and "aeromancy garage" (2020). He is the founder and editor of selva oscura press.