Scarlet Sun, Irina Tall Novikova, 2024. Ink, gel pen, collage, colored paper. 40 x 30 cm.
Two poems
Taylor Franson-Thiel
Another Late Winter
The first V of the season didn’t slice
its way through winter skies until
mid-January. Geese wings reaching out
to touch mountain peaks re-acquainted with,
finally, snow. The Utah desert becomes more
convincing each year—water abandoning
its frozen post. The legend of
“The Greatest Snow on Earth”
falling into myths murky past.
Will my children learn how to catch
snowflakes on their tongues, or remember
the squall of migrating birds above—
who, now, no longer need to seek warmer air?
I remember years as a child where my uncles
would pick me up and drop me in snow drifts
taller than my tiny body and for a moment
my whole world was a cold white tunnel
until a smiling face appeared above me,
reaching down to pull me out.
Motherwings
Mother Sparrow held a blackberry under
her tongue until she could spit the seeds
into her baby’s beaked need in
the same spring my hands shaped ways
for new gods after my lip was split open
by a man who also said I love you.
The blood leaking down my chin,
a something holy. My mother asked me
if I’d like her to kill him. I thought
I would I would I would—
but said Please don’t knowing if I said yes,
off she would have flown,
bringing with her the vengeance of all mothers
with daughters who don’t know how to leave.
Instead, I imagine her fists swinging
fury. Feathers flying. Pecking at any
uncovered flesh. Drawing from his violence
seed after filthy seed. Now I remember
it as the spring I needed my mother the most
and she held no forgiveness in her wings.
Taylor Franson-Thiel is a Pushcart nominated poet from Utah, now based in Fairfax, Virginia. She received her Master’s in Creative Writing from Utah State University and is pursuing an MFA at George Mason University. She enjoys lifting heavy weights and posting reviews to Goodreads like someone is actually reading them. She can be found on X/Twitter @TaylorFranson.