Taylor Cornelius

What I want to mention is the strawberry-blonde raccoon 
I saw on Instagram and the partly-wild hawks in Prospect Park. 
If you’ve seen a hawk eat a bird, then you know a thing or two. 
The morning field, muddy and misted, 
sun cracking through the eggshell sky 
and the kind of afternoon light that sets my teeth on edge. 
At what point does indifference make me a little bit happier?
I’ve been more relaxed recently. 
Please don’t try to sell me anything based on my face. 
At dinner Maddie asks, is Venice the one with the rivers? 
The fish tanks in the nursing home 
need a dose of reality. Get it over with and take a plane to see
Italy unspooled into the bigness of the sea.

Taylor Cornelius is a poet, artist, and writer from Denver. She is the recipient of the 2015 Academy of American Poets prize at Kenyon College, and a former Kenyon Review fellow. A recent graduate of New York University’s MFA program in poetry, she currently lives in Brooklyn.