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Poem
by Joshua
Marie Wilkinson
from
The Book of the Umbrella
I brought you the box of digger moths.
I hid you in my good umbrella.
***
Could you take the other
side
of this in your mitten
& make a shield with me?
***
The spell finds you & you fold like a cloak.
***
But
how many baths are you allowed
each
month?
***
Here are the birds & what they’ve
said makes a book of your hands.
***
This sadness a sieve.
The twin sisters got it like a powder on their
naked shins, rinsed
their
hair
in it.
***
The score was printed on the inside of his ribs.
These are the tools they’ll pry you open with.
& these are the tools I can fit in my pockets.
***
Your voice to lift
the spell from this opened melon.
***
Watching the sheep
move through
the hole in his nap.
His brothers
murmured through
the vent &
the sounds
from their mouths
came into the boy
as if
through a satellite.
***
Bones smelled of milk & aluminum.
***
& why won’t the secret
bookshelf give
to
pushing?
***
I called your name twice & a boy
with your name showed up
with all the animals from the road.
***
If sleepy, then keyhole.
Joshua Marie Wilkinson's most recent book is Lug
Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (Iowa, 2006), and two
new chapbooks are forthcoming from Octopus Books and Pilot Books. He
teaches at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design and at University
of Denver and has recently completed a collaborative book with Noah
Eli Gordon. |
