Copyright © Rob Taylor, 2021
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FIRST EDITION
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: Strangers : poems / Rob Taylor.
Names: Taylor, Rob, 1983- author.
Description: Poems.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021012248X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210122501 | ISBN 9781771964197 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771964203 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS8639.A9555 S77 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23
Edited by Luke Hathaway
Copyedited by Emily Donaldson
Text and cover designed by Christina Angeli
Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the financial support of the Government of Canada. Biblioasis also acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,709 individual artists and 1,078 organizations in 204 communities across Ontario, for a total of $52.1 million, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates.
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA
For Jim Sr., Jim Jr. and Jon
For we are who we are, and more, all that is ridden within us in the same way our fathers are not our fathers but someone else’s inconsolable sons
— Chris Banks
Contents
The bucket is blue and deep and brims with cool water
What Wisdom’s in Wisdom Recorded?
Stroking your back through a nightmare
On the Occasion of my Mother First Forgetting my Name
Are your flies grass, like mine?