Poetry by Ingrid L. Taylor

               ​Bonnie Moreland CC



​
CW: sexual assault (not graphic)


Gravity 

We are the girls of unbordered touch. Pastel girls
with mutable margins. We hold tea parties on clouds, 
we flutter dandelion puffs. We break and scatter in the wind. 

We are the girls who drink too much, who expose our bellies and thighs 
and put our tongues in the mouths of boys. We steal 
their dirt and their fire. 

We find ourselves in T-shirts in the freezing woods, our blood 
already slowing to the ice of the survived. We find ourselves
stripped and laid bare, our soles twisting in a downward spin

as if the earth had already taken us. 
As if we were heavier 
than gravity. 

We find ourselves, markered and arrowed  
-Bitch, slut, whore-
lines drawn to the points of easy access,

our ease their access. 
We are the girls whose hips lift skyward 
and turn our faces into the earth. To the molten core 

of the Earth where all our transgressions are burned away. 
Our wounds cast no shadows. Our feet root upward 
and beneath the soil’s crust our bare soles, daisies 

stretching for some sky. Our ground, 
embattled and hard lost, fertile 
for the boys who overcame us and soldiered 

onward. The boys who lived 
as if it had not happened, as if the laws 
of gravity were immutable, 

as if a planted field of wronged girls 
could not stop 
a planetary axis on its spin. 






CW: physical abuse (not graphic)


Salt 

In a wash of pink 
under the scorpion moon 
you tell me how he broke 
your ankle 
& you cried all night 
             (while I was swaddled beside you)

begging for a hospital, for aspirin. 
There are stronger remedies 
I want to tell you,
but we agree 

I was the lucky one 
because he never fractured 
any of my bones 

& I know now why I shunned salt, 
refused to steal the feet of rabbits, 
or pluck clovers from their verdant beds.  

& when the wound returns to shelter
in bone malformed and unstable, 
shattered again 
to release what we’ve become, 

I am moon water dripping down a chin 
I am eating these pinkened stars one by one 
consuming every pinprick
where he traced the Big Dipper 
               and Cassiopeia and Orion 
& taught me to love their cold distant light.
​

Ingrid L. Taylor is a poet, science writer, and veterinarian who is most likely to be found talking to the dog at a party. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in the Southwest Review, the Ocotillo Review, FERAL: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Horse Egg Literary, and others. Her poem “Mermaids” received Punt Volat Journal’s Annual Poetry Award in 2021. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Sentient Media. She’s received support for her writing from the Playa Artist Residency, the Horror Writers Association, and Gemini Ink, and she holds an MFA in fiction and nonfiction from Pacific University. Find her online at ingridltaylor.com. 

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