The World Underneath

Richard Tayson

• Publisher: The Kent State University Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781631010682
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

An intimate second book of poems

Richard Tayson's second book of poems, The World Underneath, concerns birth, motherhood, explorations of the feminine in a world scarred by war, environmental crisis, and violence. The book's locus is a series of poems related to a home birth, an event that leads the poems' speaker to question the place of the individual within the home, the world, and the wider universe. All things connect, as the speaker travels cross-country to the birth then back to where he lives in a multiracial relationship of two men committed to each another. The book's widest aim is to unite the personal and the universal, the masculine and the feminine, the gay and the non-gay. As they explore the crucial dilemmas of our time, Tayson's poems probe beneath ordinary experience to discover the ineffable and the difficult-to-say, the space between what we know and what remains distant, unreachable.

"Reading Richard Tayson's The World Underneath rejoices my heart and gives me a little hope for both humanity and poetry. I read with awe the sequence in which this gay poet attends his sister-in-law's home delivery of a son, after flying 'over one of the nineteen states that still puts people like me in prison. O Texas, O Tennessee, sweet Georgia with your one-to-twenty years felony.' Tayson's language is fast-moving, passionate, compassionate—alive with physical, spiritual and political detail that makes him heir to Muriel Rukeyser."
—Alicia Ostriker

"Richard Tayson sees the world through the eyes of a man dedicated to love. His poems walk the walk of a poet willing to open that world and look at it for what it is, its joys and terrors, even when he must look at his own dark insides. I especially rejoice for his poems of intimacy and friendship with women, women who he sees not as 'other, ' but as people struggling with the same concerns that he has. This sensibility is a rare contribution to our literature! In a life threatening moment, he gains a clear vantage, 'you climb higher, get a wide view of the world's delicacies, love....' In The World Underneath, the poems are all love poems whose beauty and authority convince me of the depth of the poet's journey. His poems are easy to enter—you may feel that you are talking to a best friend—so easy to enter you might not notice the twin knives of truth and lyricism they have been held up to."
—Toi Derricotte

"Richard Tayson's The World Underneath is a series of passionate visions, stunning in their directness and emotional power. They bear witness to birth and the body's miracles, to homophobic violence and unspeakable losses, and to the tensile strength of love and loyalty that connects us against the odds. Awe and fierce anger sing in these poems, as the questing spirit in them seeks to grow large enough to include us all."
—Joan Larkin

"It's a rare treat when a poet achieves such mature work as these gritty poems, celebrating his epiphanic moments, among them the miracles of childbirth and his blissful life with his lover. Even his dark rage against the injustice of homophobic violence comes not out of weakness but from strength. What makes these poems even more satisfying is how they burst into flame, into verbal explosions, scattering a glitter of magic."
—Edward Field

III.

The will to change begins in the body not in the mind

—ADRIENNE RICH

I DO

I bought the rings at R. J. White Jewelers

from the old man with cataracts

who handed me the black velvet tray,

like a silver tureen reflecting black

orchids at the reception after

we’d kissed. I took

the tray and as I started to shake,

he told me to try one on for size,

then turned his back and blew

dust and dried rose petals

from the mantle. “Been in business

forty years,” he said, rubbing

his finger over a smudged

mirror. So I chose the one

with tiny grooves etched

along the edge, I put it on

my ring finger, left hand—what

was I doing, this was not something

I could have planned for

or foretold, once done

it could never be cancelled.

“That’s nice,” he said, and told me

how he’d opened the shop in 1963,

same location, two hundred thirty dollars

to spare and a love of metals

that alchemized to liquid gold

under fire. “Back then

there weren’t too many boys like you

buying rings, no sir. This was

before Stonewall, of course.”

It had been years since I was called

a boy, and I thought how I was seven

the day in 1969 those men

in skirts and high heels stood up,

three blocks away, for the lives

of people like me who would one day

walk into a shop and buy a ring

for another man’s finger. “You sure

this will fit him,” I asked, looking

down at that perfect gold

circle, like a halo that would taste

of fire if I put it on my tongue

and swallowed. He patted my hand,

the way a grandmother would

and said, “If it doesn’t, bring him in

and I’ll serve the champagne I keep

chilled in back for special occasions.”

R. J. winked then, and a white

poodle appeared, as if the dog knew

those syllables of drink by heart,

and I supposed they’d been living there,

together, since 1963, watching the years

go by like the parade passing

down Christopher each fourth

Sunday in June. Let me not

to the marriage of true minds

admit impediments, so I gave him

five hundred eighty-six dollars

and held in my hand the velvet case,

soft as my lover’s palm, and went

to the Stonewall Bar to pay

my debt of gratitude with two

sips of gin and the feel

of names carved in the countertop:

Michael loves Robert,

Bill + Guillermo forever.

I started to get sentimental,

so I took the F train home and found

him on the couch in his underwear,

I held him for a long time, kissed

his lips and the room crowded close

around us, everyone we loved

took a seat, relatives alive

and dead, friends alive

and dead, everyone who had been

imprisoned for kissing in public,

the ones who were tortured

and had their tongues cut out,

the ones kept in boxes

the size of the body, the ones

tied to a fence and beaten

in the name of God. In front

of them all, I held the hand

of the man I loved

and said I wanted him in my life

for as long as I have my life.

His eyes welled up, and I tasted

salt in the corners of my mouth,

then I tasted his salt inside

my mouth as we

married each other

in front of the Van Wyck Expressway

at 6:15 on June 8th, a Tuesday

which will never repeat itself.

ARMS

I’m late for the birth-

day party, it’s one

of those cool after-

noons when the world

is clear, is made

of glass, the sky

so blue you want to

look up at the very

center of its pupil

in case you get

a glimpse of what

comes after

we leave here. I’m

thinking my lover’s

sister is 32

today, but I want

to let time stand

still, let t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• I.
• II.
• III.