Turning Forty

by RICHARD TAYLOR

My brain has turned the way a piece of fruit
turns from ripe to rotten—not on a point, a true point,
a window that sits on a dull ledge with beveled edges.
Today I read about a new therapeutic drug that may
stop our cells from aging—stop the fruit of my brain
before someone in the kitchen looks at it and says,
no one is ever going to eat this, and tosses it
into the compost bin. Truthfully speaking, this is
just the beginning for the fruit, for a rotting
apple is more biologically complex than the one
I desire. So what is consciousness other than a question
I am never supposed to ask directly, if I care to be poetic.
This evening I do not. Care to be. And many evenings
the crickets are louder than the creek, yet I can hear both.
I am also old and young, like the obscene “Congrats, you’re 40!”
grocery store birthday card. Too old for this, too young for that.
Down in the culvert a wild animal, probably a cat,
yowls and hisses, silence. Animal sex. I walk to the street.
There are no glowing eyes in the woods, no mystery
in the dark but the rubbed-out stars above
in this forsaken desert that craves rain—dirty starlight
polluted by my porch lights and all my neighbors’.
Dust to dust, so it goes, which unfairly suggests
that more than dust will linger—but not in the air.
In the desert instead, forty years waiting
for a promise that we made to ourselves.

Ω

Richard Taylor is a poet and visual artist who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. After three advanced degrees and a stint teaching at MIT, he still believes that poetry is the most compelling tool we have to understand the universe. A Pushcart nominee, his work has appeared in various publications including Orchard’s, Poor Yorick, BarBar, Public Poetry, and others.

Frederick Dasinger is a transgender artist based in Arcata, California. He is currently a student at Cal Poly Humboldt studying journalism. Dasinger and other artists created Planet Zine, a magazine dedicated to celebrating the art of LGBTQ+ Sacramento artists. Dasinger’s work uses a lot of bold, contrasting colors and simple shapes contrasted with detailed forms. He is a mixed media artist who has created artwork using paint, photography, film, music, poetry, ceramics, fabric, and more.