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TPCReview Issue 001

Jonathan Pyner

Taipei, Motorcycle Dream #84
or The Overpass Nests Speak Ocean

On rainy days, they witness much, the pigeons—
pooling in the central boulevard, motor scooters and cars,
barges ascending expressway onramps, crosswalks crowded
with pedestrians under overhangs. Above tin rooftops,
a house swift floats in leisure, as raindrops echo
back up to its wing pocket. I know nothing of birds

nor of their mealtime surveillance, only the morning
rush to work—when the swerve scooters negotiate
around slow-going trucks mimics herring
maneuvering their school, street now ground
now lagoon. At the river mouth, seagulls hover
fish-bound, humpback whales float docile off the coast

carving a wake calm in their road, and a bus
blows its horn to warn back the deluge of hands
before gulping commuters on to the next stop.
The overpass stormwater spills in precise intervals,
and in the downpour seem to spin pairs of red lights—
when whitecaps swallow hollows of wind,

what remains within? What emerges from the flood?—
and a pair of tires glide, ground now water now asphalt now
catches the man’s body below where the swifts perch
in their concrete nests—I am not a bird
in this poem, but I float for a moment—looking down
at my blue, body-length raincoat, the road rising as the ocean

does to an osprey diving for cod. As talons grasp at flesh,
the kickstand pierces the left jean leg. From roadside bushes,
the pigeons now swarm the fresh carrion
and have questions, like What day is it? When
is your birthday? Does that lump on your head
have any bread in it?

The beach washes up bullwhip kelp
with the tide. Aware the lighthouse,
the evening ship steers north of the glow.

Raised in Napa, California, Jonathan Pyner graduated from University of California, Berkeley, where he was a student-teacher poet in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. He earned his MFA in creative writing with a focus in poetry from the Jackson Center for Creative Writing at Hollins University. He has been a member of the Taipei Poetry Collective since its earliest workshops in 2017. His work can be found in About Place Journal, Fourth River Journal, Pacific International Poetry Festival 2022 Anthology, and Taipei Poetry Collective’s Versify. Since 2015, he has lived in Taipei, where he studies, teaches, translates, and writes.