Geography of One
poems by
Richard Allen Taylor
ISBN: 978-1-964277-91-2, 76 pages, $14 (+ shipping)
Projected Release Date: August/September 2026
An Advance Sale Discount price of $8.50 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $12.50/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 12180 Skyview Drive, Edinboro, PA 16412.
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Richard Allen Taylor is the author of four previous poetry collections including Letters to Karen Carpenter and Other Poems (Main Street Rag, 2023). His poems, articles and reviews have appeared in many publications including Aeolian Harp, Litmosphere, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, and Sheila-Na-Gig. Winner of the Passionfruit Poetry Prize 2025, Taylor is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, former review editor for The Main Street Rag and a founding co-editor emeritus of Kakalak Anthology of Poetry and Art. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and currently resides in Greer, South Carolina.
With Geography of One, my admiration of Richard Taylor’s work continues and grows. From the collection’s opening lines, “If you need a guide through the territories/of loneliness, take me” to its concluding ones, “There’s/a last time for everything, but you don’t want this/to be your last sentence. So you type one more,” these are poems of insight, compassion, and wry humor. They contemplate the human experience from Bojangles to the solar system. Taylor is, indeed, a guide through the landscape of our mortality – its sadnesses and joys. ~Joseph Mills, author The Holiday Cycle and Bodies in Motion
Geography of One guides readers “through the territories/of loneliness” to “Last Times,” a tour offering sensory delights, ironies, idiosyncrasies, and a plea for Superman to save us from “those who /want to rule, not serve.” Taylor’s “superpower” is the wry wit and heart he brings to both serious concerns and seriously fun explorations of diverse subjects, including James Bond, Bojangles, and the word for “warmth of the sun in winter.” ~Maureen Ryan Griffin
Tour Guide
If you need a guide through the territories
of loneliness, take me. I know these lands,
speak the language, have wandered here for years.
I’m self-taught. Too proud to ask for directions,
I drew the map, based on my own surveys and many
plunges into the jungle dark, the deserts beyond,
the endless dunes and empty seas without birds
or ships. I have taken copious notes, filled
books with longitudes and latitudes.
I don’t claim to be the foremost
expert, but
I’ve learned the geography of One
and its sovereign territories: solitude, single,
solo, island, isolation. I’ve studied chronic
cabin fever and tinkered with remedies.
My recommendation? When you think
you’re hungry, treat it as a need for company.
Go out for a cheeseburger, talk to someone
who will listen and take notes. Ask her
to repeat it back to you: two patties,
well done, American, hold the onions.
After I Killed My Dog
I went out for a cheeseburger.
Nemo had struggled for days to breathe.
He couldn’t keep his food down.
The vet laid out the options, which
sounded similar to those the oncologist
gave my late wife before she died, except
hospice was not on the list for Nemo.
I knew all I needed to know about euthanasia.
Last year, I held my other dog, Kenya,
in my arms while that other vet,
in that other town, injected an anesthetic first,
then the lethal drug. Painless, quick. Nemo,
in his last minute, lay down on the cool
tiles at my feet and had what I hoped
was a moment of pure bliss before dying.
The vet pressed her stethoscope to his chest,
then a few other places on his rib cage
to make sure the end was the end.
I had already done the paperwork,
planned the cremation, paid the bill
while the heart—my heart …
The diner wasn’t crowded,
midafternoon. I wolfed down
the cheeseburger, trying to look
innocent, wondering
if the waitress could tell
I had just killed my dog.
Making a Salad for Frank O’Hara
I toss in some raw spinach, which contains
the same toxin—oxalic acid—found in rhubarb leaves.
Like Frank’s frequently over-the-top metaphors
and hard-to-follow flights of hyperbole, the oxalates
probably won’t hurt us, as long as we don’t overindulge.
Besides, many medicines have small amounts of poison.
The other ingredients I list without regard for rhythm
or assonance: carrots, tomatoes, onion, bell pepper,
crushed pecans, a few berries, crumbled feta.
Did you know Frank worked for the Museum
of Modern Art? He organized exhibits. That reminds me,
all my salad ingredients have appeared in paintings,
though the veggies may have been hidden under
a glaze of abstract expressionism. That red blob? Tomato.
That purple smear? Blueberry. I chop quickly. Any delay
whatsoever may result in surprising turns. Bell peppers
ringing. Carrots becoming 24 karat. Even the knife
is prone to dramatic twists. It could make a grand jeté
or pound itself into a plowshare, though Frank would
never allow it to be clichéd between a pirate’s teeth.
The salad is for two people, the poet and the reader.
Don’t forget the oil and vinegar. A little less oil.
A little more vinegar.
August
The name means venerable or magnificent,
a variant of Augustus, the exalted Roman Emperor,
who would have put his pants on the same way
as everyone else, but Romans considered pants barbaric,
and outlawed their wearing in the city—except as part
of an official military uniform—in the year 399,
long after Augustus died. Tunics, togas, and stolas
were all the rage. Here, in a land where most men
consider neckties barbaric, we wear cargo shorts,
and August means hot, which can mean sexy
but not necessarily. I once knew a woman named Sahara
who was hot. She was venerable and magnificent,
but had nothing to do with August. She lived in
Minneapolis, a city more Greek than Roman. August
ranked as the 88th most popular name for boys
born in the U.S. in 2024. As the globe warms,
the popularity of August declines but will never
desert us. Most likely, it will find new admirers
near Buenos Aires and Canberra, where August
is a lot like February. I ponder these things while
remembering Sahara, whom I haven’t thought of
in years, as I eat my dessert of strawberry ice cream,
on a hot day in August, feeling venerable,
and, of course, magnificent.
