{"id":38013,"date":"2017-09-10T22:23:39","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T04:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38013"},"modified":"2018-09-20T22:24:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T04:24:56","slug":"natalie-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/natalie-taylor\/","title":{"rendered":"Natalie Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\"\"READ LOCAL FIRST\u00a0<\/strong>is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. 15 Bytes regularly offers works-in-progress and\/or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction and memoir.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today we feature\u00a0three poems from Holladay-based Natalie Taylor, author of the poetry chapbook\u00a0Eden\u2019s Edge\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(Finishing Line Press), and winner of first place in the 2016 Utah Original Writing Competition. Taylor\u2019s work has appeared in\u00a0Rock & Sling<\/em>,\u00a0The Helicon West Anthology<\/em>, and elsewhere. She will appear with poet Paisley Rekdal, Poet Laureate of Utah, at 15 Bytes\u2019 Read Local reading series in January.<\/p>\n

The following poems are from her manuscript-in-progress,\u00a0Past the Minotaur<\/em>, a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth.<\/p>\n

Read, sip, enjoy!<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Maiden 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without a thread<\/p>\n

I followed you.<\/p>\n

Lovely game. This way and that.<\/p>\n

Musk down<\/p>\n

this dank corridor,<\/p>\n

rat skull snaps under foot.<\/p>\n

Shadow shrinks on the wall,<\/p>\n

you must be this way. So I go.<\/p>\n

Stone on three sides<\/p>\n

above, below,<\/p>\n

smooth as a snake.<\/p>\n

You must be chasing other maidens.<\/p>\n

Chase me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I pinch the skin under my arms<\/p>\n

to test time. Soon there will be<\/p>\n

nothing but bone.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a dream, I lick your calloused<\/p>\n

hands. Wait.<\/p>\n

Strain to hear<\/p>\n

you lean a horn to wall<\/p>\n

etch a dusty line toward me.<\/p>\n

I swallow and rise,<\/p>\n

hands flat on the wall,<\/p>\n

inching foot by foot until<\/p>\n

it turns this way.<\/p>\n

And then that way. And here,<\/p>\n

light slices through<\/p>\n

stone and I imagine<\/p>\n

the sea, and the sun<\/p>\n

lights my bones,<\/p>\n

and I smell fresh as a whale.<\/p>\n

And that is enough<\/p>\n

to keep me going.<\/p>\n

And then, you are here<\/p>\n

black hair curls over the<\/p>\n

ridges of your extensors,<\/p>\n

you reach for me\u2014<\/p>\n

bulging veins a map to ruin<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I follow. Find a single coarse<\/p>\n

hair from your tail. Roll it between<\/p>\n

my thumb and forefinger<\/p>\n

until my loins ignite.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Youth 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Above<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was young, I could fit in small spaces.<\/p>\n

When my brother was young, he was soft.<\/p>\n

I threw stones for him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He dug trenches in the earth with chubby fingers as I fed him sardines<\/p>\n

and olives and sang lullabies our mother sang to me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He bellowed when I hid. I brought him a racket of daffodils, oriole\u2019s egg.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Below<\/em><\/p>\n

The maze is ribbed with neon bones glowing<\/p>\n

orange and green. Feeble light shines on smiling wolves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I do not know how long I will be<\/p>\n

buried alive in this deep dark.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dirt moons my fingernails. Close enough to smell the minotaur\u2019s breath. Rotten,<\/p>\n

like giving up.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Like being given up.<\/p>\n

\u00a0*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Youth 7<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dawn\u2019s last bat flaps over a night-wet path.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A high branch creaks.<\/p>\n

An owl cries.<\/p>\n

The forest beats: It is safe. It is not safe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Leaves, radiant underfoot, levitate<\/p>\n

like a magic carpet over stones<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

rising like skeletal camel humps from sand<\/p>\n

or a row of molars lined crag to crag.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Large mammals rise from shaggy dreams<\/p>\n

moving towards blue, a thin stream. Away from me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Death is waking to a different story.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

\"\"Natalie Taylor\u00a0was named a\u00a02017 Mari Sandoz Emerging Writer: Poetry<\/a>. Her poem,\u00a0\u201cLast Day of July,\u201d published in\u00a0Ellipsis: Literature and Art<\/em>, was a co-winner of the 2000 Academy of American Poets Contest. Follow her blog,\u00a0Eden on the Edge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

READ LOCAL FIRST\u00a0is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. 15 Bytes regularly offers works-in-progress and\/or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary nonfiction and memoir. Today we feature\u00a0three poems from Holladay-based Natalie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":38014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2513],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/TaylorImage-350x350.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-18 21:23:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38015,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38013\/revisions\/38015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}