Taxonomy

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by Taylor Franson Thiel

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I trowel around the bones of something ancient. Sieve the dust from fossils
I am really only borrowing. This is how poetry starts for me. A slab of granite
in unworthy palms and I chisel bits of soul. Find the body within. Beneath
this block is a ghost I am already trying to name.

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Taylor Franson Thiel is an MFA poetry student at GMU where she is also an editorial reader for Poetry Daily. She was recently nominated for the 2023 Pushcart Prize by Chaotic Merge Magazine, won the 2024 GMU Rinehart Poetry Contest, and placed second in the 2024 Bethesda Poetry Contest. She’s been published in Quarter Press, The Shore, and New Note Poetry and have work forthcoming from Sand Hills Literary Magazine, SoFloPoJo, and Identity Theory among others.

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