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Pia Taavila teaches literature and creative writing at Gallaudet University. The GU Press will publish a collection of 128 poems (spanning thirty years' work) this spring entitled Moon on the Meadow. Back cover endorsements are from Robert Morgan, Randall Kenan, X.J. Kennedy, Keith Taylor, Raymond Luczak and Jane Gentry Vance.

Some of her recent work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Threepenny Review, The Bear River Review, The Comstock Review, Xanadu, The Asheville Poetry Review, and Appalachian Heritage.

Redeye

After the last tears were dry,
after our parting, our brief embrace,
I board a plane, strap myself in.
Midnight turbulence yields a sudden lake,
serene, shimmering in full moon light.
I fall from the sky, coming home.

Uncle Willy

My uncle, the Catholic priest, slumps
on a beach bench along Worth Avenue.
Dead palm fronds, coconut hulls lie at his feet.
At the marina, gulls pick at the skeletons of fish.
Boats, tethered, rock in the sea's languid lap.
A sweat-stained Fedora turns in his hands.
He snaps off the plastic collar and speaks.

"Her name was Peggy, a girl of polo and cocktails.
I must have misunderstood. The day before,
my mother starched my best shirt. I bought daisies.
As I walked down the pier, I saw her leap
onto a sailboat, a real beauty, a tanned man
at the rudder. Perhaps my watch was wrong."

A woman in gold lame and pink champagne hair
titters by on heels. Her hairless purse dog yips.
They nod at one another. My uncle gathers up
his blanching bones. Sea spume crystallizes
on our skin. He shuffles down to the water's edge,
rolls up his cuffs and wades, headed towards the breakers.

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