When They Finally Come for You
Darling please stay alive
for a little while more
if only because I’m
asking nice
your feral madness
a wildfire in the void
you shame the silence
with the music of your body
the bridges you dream
of throwing yourself from
will still be burning
on the morrow
stay alive if just to spite them
when they finally come for you
swallow hand grenades
and laugh into their faces.
William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His new poetry collection, The People Are Like Wolves to Me, is forthcoming from Roadside Press.
