• Submit to Five South

  • Submissions are open for flash, poetry, long fiction, and non-fiction. Read our submission guidelines.

  • Recently Published

    • Our Theseus by Nathan Jefferson
      Last week he was a dishwasher who his coworkers called Ricky. Today he’s a day laborer named Eddie, clearing a pair of fallen trees off a new build’s lawn and fixing up a large garden. Rotting plank ripped out, new plank inserted.
    • Robbing the Pillars by Marie Goyette
      Ruth stood on the narrow iron bridge, gripping her father’s obsidian necklace, and wondered how many years it would take before the river wore them both down to nothing.
    • Roll for Love by Cidney Mayes
      She holds the dice up to me. “For good luck?”
    • The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
      I hungered into that quiet until— there—unbelievable!— a wolf spider scuttled onto a leaf.
    • Saturation by Claire Oleson
      I no longer harangue every desk nurse at every hospital for a taxonomic breakdown of her bills. I don’t ask for the numbers of the Benadryl, the water cups, the abdominal touches done with gloved hands. I am the most American I’ve ever been—she costs what she costs and I eat it.

Accelerated History of Us by Gordon Taylor

March 8, 2022
Reading Time: 1 Minutes

In the beginning

I am not sure what to say

so, I nod at you.

*

The earth is altered

forever, trying to shift

from one foot to two.

*

You steady me, hand

on my back, as we float through

a slow-cooked summer.

*

You can never find

your eyeglasses, even when

they are on your face.

*

The coming thunder

excites the shad flies, swarming

in blurs of worry.

*

You say I can’t hold

anyone I think is not

my kind of perfect.

*

Parallel ash; two

cigarettes interrupted

burning on a curb.

*

Mid-winter branches

crawl into our path, giant

spiders made of ice.

*

In my bed you leave

a Post-It Naan recipe

that we never bake.

*

I know spring is here

when the sun is strong enough

to melt a snowbank.

*

Our mythology

evaporates into new

boots and pink crocus.

*

I awake surprised

to learn that beginnings

look the same as ends.


Share

Poetry  / The Weekly

Taylor, Gordon
Gordon Taylor (he/him) is a queer poet who walks an ever-swaying wire of technology, health care and poetry. His poems have appeared in Tickle Ace (now Defunct), Prairie Fire, Plenitude, The Bridport Arts Prize Anthology and is forthcoming in Months to Years.

Read More by Taylor, Gordon:


You might also like

The Call by Eben E. B. Bein
February 25, 2025
girl, glissading by Irteqa Khan
October 6, 2022
The Bird Beneath My Feet by Kenton K. Yee
June 8, 2022