Strangers. Rob Taylor

      Copyright © Rob Taylor, 2021

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

      FIRST EDITION

       Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Title: Strangers : poems / Rob Taylor.

      Names: Taylor, Rob, 1983- author.

      Description: Poems.

      Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021012248X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210122501 | ISBN 9781771964197 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771964203 (ebook)

      Classification: LCC PS8639.A9555 S77 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23

      Edited by Luke Hathaway

      Copyedited by Emily Donaldson

      Text and cover designed by Christina Angeli

      Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.

      PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

      For Jim Sr., Jim Jr. and Jon

       For we are who we are, and more, all that is ridden within us in the same way our fathers are not our fathers but someone else’s inconsolable sons

      — Chris Banks

       Contents

       Strangers

       You ask me about my mother

       Smoothing the Holy Surfaces

       That Scar

       Lunch

       Speak When Illuminated

       A Normal Day

       Love, fidelity, etc.

       The bucket is blue and deep and brims with cool water

       Aubade

       Weather in Dublin

       Ultrasound

       The Future

       Colic

       Transatlantic

       November, Six a.m.

       The Jockey of Artemision

       One Lie

       Krakatoa

       3M

       What Wisdom’s in Wisdom Recorded?

       At Roblin Lake

       Voices

       The Artist

       The Long Goodbye

       Stroking your back through a nightmare

       Poems

       King Tide

       The Commons

       Łazienki Park

       On the Occasion of my Mother First Forgetting my Name

       The Baffled King

       Diagnosis

       What did you dream about?

       Most days you still remember

       Old Game

       Why and Why

       Transmission Tower

       Reprieve

       Return to Roblin

       Are your flies grass, like mine?

       Matryoshka