Mark Taksa
The Root
Pavement Saw Press Chapbook Series
ISBN 1-886350-58-2
32 Pages, 6 by 9
$6.00
Mark Taksa was born in San Antonio, Texas and grew up in New York City. For various reasons, he quit high school. After completing his service in the Air Force, he graduated from UC Berkeley, earned a Master's Degree in English (Creative Writing) from San Francisco State University, and taught high school for thirty years. He lives in Albany, California, where his wife, son, and he enjoys walking their two Siberian Huskies.
Mark Taksa's chapbooks include Choice At The Blossom Café (March Street Press, 2002), The End Of Soup Kitchens (Pudding House, 2002), Cradlesong (1993 winner of Pudding House's National Looking Glass Poetry Chapbook Competition and published in 1994), and Truant Bather (The Berkeley Poets Workshop and Press, 1986).
Poems in this chapbook first appeared in: Aura, Berkeley Poetry Review, Concho River Review, Confrontation, Crab Creek Review, Illuminations, Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review, Laurel Review, The MacGuffin, Pacific Review, Panhandler, Passages North, Permafrost, Poet Lore, River City, Slant, Sow's Ear, Southern Poetry Review, Sun Dog, Wisconsin Review and Xanadu.
-----------Free Sample Poem----------------------
The Bee Dealer
My eyes, fools say, have been too full
of wine for me to count. If I glare into headlights
and keep counting, I will get a lucky price
for my bees, will stop thinking of divorce
when I see the letter "D." And I know
the number of bees in my hives, know the number
of ounces in all the jars, know the ounces of honey
the people in the town consume, know
the number of ounces the average town gobbles,
know neighbors speculate why I left
my mathematical job, know the number
of bullets in my pocket, know
every person near a window must consume
honey sweet as a town without gossip.
