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.
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.
