Taylor Cornelius

Straw Man

I decide I must be dying, I decide to tweeze my eyebrows,
I’m out of foolish nothings to murmur back to an ex-lover. Once again, the spirit
is gone from the glass. I decide to bake a cake in my own oven again. 

Sometimes I wake from a nightjar call and I like to think
I’m a swamp when this happens, surrounded by harmless frogs. I draw
a self-portrait called “Straw Man” and tape it to the inside of my coat.

In the green flat of a park lawn I overhear All the bad stuff too, you can’t take out the bad stuff and still
have that happy memory. It’s like separating wheat from chaff but no one cares if I paint it black and
shove it under a bed. I like myself better medicated.

The distance between feeling and understanding has an expiration date. In the corner of my room, I
see blended shadows like a leather coat, a pack of cigarettes, dirty sneakers.
I forgot to vacuum again.

I harbor unfounded envy like a little dark dock. Every lover’s last lover appears in neon yellow
tracksuits with perfect nail beds. 

A year ago I bought every copy of a book so no one else could read it.
I said it was our little secret
but really it was because I hate admitting I loved it after all.

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Taylor Cornelius is a poet, artist and writer from Denver, Colorado. Her recent work is published or forthcoming in Poets.org, The Spectacle and Leavings. Taylor is a recent graduate of New York University’s MFA program in poetry and was named a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship finalist in 2022. She currently works as a freelance writer and lives in Brooklyn.