FOR THE MONTH OF APRIL, which is National Poetry month, I am posting a new poem here every day as well as on Twitter & Instagram (@TaylorMali), and Facebook (Taylor Mali the Poet). If there are a few days missing here, they are elsewhere (I promise).

4/8/2013
When to Fly Separately (& When Not To)

One big happy family traveling together,
my brother and his wife, because of their three kids,
fly on separate planes when they’re apart.
You have to think of who you’d leave behind.

My brother or his wife, with one of their three kids—
there’s only one exception to this rule—
you have to think of who you’d leave behind.
But if they have all their children with them?

That’s the only exception to the rule:
We fly on separate planes when we’re apart,
but if we have all our children with us, then
We’re one big happy family traveling together.

4/4/2013
Magnifies an Object Ten Times

                         is what it clearly said
on the handle of the Magnifying Glass
my father received on his fifth birthday,
which he took to mean the birthday gift
would only work its magic ten times
and no more, becoming, after that,
just a small round window with no miracle,
a circle of simple glass, a toy giant’s monocle.

And so he went about his days with thrift
mixed into his curiosity, weighing how much
he needed to see any part of the world up close,
observing as best he could with his own eyes first,
thinking, I can probably guess what that bug
would look like big, that dandelion, that blade
of grass, that wriggling moth in the spider’s web.
Better not waste one of my ten precious times.

He doesn’t remember the moment he realized
ten times” in this context meant tenfold
and not ten instances, nor the joy that must
have come with such a limitless epiphany.
But what he said he sometimes missed still
was the way the magic made him see the world—
not through the glass—when he thought that magic
would not last.

4/3/2013

4/2/2013
Would You? Could You? In an Old Synagogue?

Passing the old shul in our neighborhood,
which seems now to have become a home,
the carved Hebrew in stone over the door
and the stained glass six-pointed star
the only clues remaining of its weathered past,
I turned to you and asked if you could ever
live in such a place.

And you, thinking I was asking if Judaism
itself would allow or approve such a move
onto ground once consecrated, told me
Jews do not believe in a place made holy
by ritual. Or rather, that the Sabbath
can be celebrated anywhere you choose.
In a cardboard box, were the words you used.

So I ask you next if this cardboard box
might also have in it a cute little fox
wearing purple socks. If he could help
light the candles on Shabbat.

And your laughter is a blessing to my ears.
You who know what it is I do, and exactly who
in my heart I am. You, lovely you, my foxy Jew,
the green eggs to my ham.

4/1/2013

Write A Poem Every Day

An old journal I found began
with these words I wrote to myself:
Write a poem every day. It makes you feel
like a poet. And that is still true, even though
the rest of the journal was empty.

And now today, again, I start
to do for one month exactly what
I should be doing for the whole year:
Writing a poem every day.

Forget Cristin with her two poems a day,
her NEA, and her three-bedroom house
she gets to stay in for free for six months!
I will set my sights a little lower.

Begin this morning with tea
and the view of The Freedom Tower
outside my window, which has risen
as I have from the ashes of its former self.
And which, from this angle, is glassed
almost all the way to the top.
More mirror, more sky, more sun.

3/26/13
An Apology to Senator Robert Portman of Ohio

Because you changed your position on gay marriage
only after you found out your son was gay,
I am sorry for briefly wishing you had

another son with no health insurance,
and another with PTSD, and a daughter
battered by her husband, and another raped,

in need of an abortion, and a black son,
and an immigrant son, and a poor son,
and a grandchild at Sandy Hook.

Come April, which is National Poetry Month, I’ll be posting a new poem here every day. At least that’s the plan. In the meantime, here’s a new poem that I just finished. Know, as you read it, that it is entirely true, and to this day I try to travel with two unused passport photos of myself and my partner (and make her do the same!).

What You’ll Look Like When You’re Abducted

by Taylor Mali

This morning, I asked if I could take your picture
to have when we travel so that when you’re abducted,
I’ll be able to go straight to the local police and say,
This is what she looks like. Please, help me find her!

You who had just awoken laughed and said doing so
would likely make the police consider me a suspect,
which I said I could live with, having nothing to hide.
I’m an organized man. I just love you and want you back.

You looked unconvinced and sleepy still, but perhaps
remembered how once, decades before I ever knew you,
an official at the American Embassy told me the only thing
stopping her from issuing me an instant emergency passport

(to replace the one I had lost while on a camel safari in Kenya)
was two regulation passport photos, two simple photos, which
could be obtained from any copy shop or photography studio
I might be able to find open. In Nairobi. On a Saturday night.

I asked you if you wanted a shower before I took the picture.
Perhaps a chance to put on makeup. And I’ll be damned
if I didn’t fall deeper in love with you for saying, No.
My hair is filthy and disheveled. I’m tired and need my coffee.

Take the picture now.

This is a prestigious invitational slam at the gorgeous State Theater in Modesto. I’ve been invited in the past, but I was never free. Surprise, surprise: this year I am! I’ll be competing against seven other poets—George Yamazawa Jr., Robert Zenz, Sam Sax, Nikki Blak, Prentice Powell, Carlos Robson, and Katelyn Lucas—I only know one of them personally and have only heard of one other. But this slam being what it is, they are probably all awesome (and younger than me)! Tickets are $15, and it sells out every year!
The State Theater
is located at 1307 J Street, Modesto, CA
(209) 527-4697
http://www.thestate.org/
https://www.facebook.com/TheILLLIST

If you miss it, check out the high school slam the night before where I’ll be the guest of honor and will be trying out my secret strategy!

Here’s a new poem I wrote about the night I danced with a straight man in a gay bar. It’s called “Dance With the One That Brought You, or,
My Night in a Gay Cowboy Bar in Dallas Texas.”

for Jason Carney

A redneck working on an MFA,
two gay Texans, a blonde in a miniskirt
and cowboy boots, and poet from New York City
all walk into a gay cowboy bar in Dallas.
This is not a joke.

It is the week before Christmas and the dance floor
is filled with cowboys dancing a Texas two step
and holding each other lovely and close, here
where the threat of being beaten to death
has been banished to the long drive home,
or at least the parking lot outside.
This is not a joke.

This is something I was told I had to see
because we don’t have anything like it in New York City.
It is the week before Christmas, and there is one old
jolly white-bearded cowboy in his mid seventies
dressed up to look like just like Santa Claus.
If Santa Claus ever went to a gay cowboy bar in Dallas, Texas.
Or New York City for that matter.

Neither of the gay Texans will dance with Jason,
the redneck, and I know this because I watch him
get shot down twice, both of them laughing
and holding each others’ hands a little harder
as if to say, “We will not take part in what, for you,
will no doubt be in time just a funny story.”
This is not a joke.

And of course, to waltz the floor in a gay cowboy bar
with a woman, even if she is blonde, wears a hat
like a rodeo, and rocks red lipstick like a bloody mouth—
especially for all of this—would be disrespectful.
A redneck knows this. So Jason doesn’t ask.

And it must be because I am not gay that Jason doesn’t ask
me to dance, which, under the circumstances,
seems not to be a good enough reason.
So it is I who asks him. And we take each other
in our arms and dance, as best we can,
the only two straight guys in the bar.
Or so it seems to us, which is why we laugh
while we dance, our friends at the table wishing
that between them someone had a camera.

This was long ago. And I can hear in the memory
of that laughter now other minor strains of fear,
and shame, and privilege—this is not a joke—
but the major tones are merely joy, and love.
And that’s how I remember the night Jason and I
danced in a gay cowboy bar in Dallas, Texas.