JOSHUA MARIE WILKINSON

THE SONNETS

There was one mark
                           to make in
the sonnets

& it stickles

forth, a gaped

open fish—

gift to wind

& foxes

a little shade or

shadow for death to

perch in.

POEM FOR FRED MOTEN

Somebody walks into the bar
to join you there in your booth with
what’s scrawled onto the wall
& so carried off by a white kid
to a president in the times.

For the internet maggots like to
scuttle forth in the comment
stream as all told & come on
with their smirk as if to suggest
proof is this pinky finger typing

& I know it’s not that
they aren’t allowed to mention
what they wish up, it’s
that decorum’s half-door
is flung into an island
of trash known by the
wretched earthly gusts.

POEM FOR CA

So cold
the little
heat spun
from galactic
zeal—a jealous
raven in a dash
to here came
slow, sort of
purposeless
& for candy
drinking til
drunk, fucking
til spun, so I
say clean,
warped nighty
night.

WEAPON OR WEATHER

The weapon’s gleam
got your stanchion fixed right—

machines flummoxy in
their whirl—

The bright eaglet in
the nest
cordons off the scene.

Now, cowboy we is
gonna throw the
body unto the
gurney & get it

back till the white
clod of dust at the eye, some
weather system
of forgiveness.

POEM FOR LLB

What is so near to us both
that I want to call it down
from the trees to the drunken grass
& name it?

I meant each syllable
& the moon lost
its crooked, lovely light
onto the sapling
bent-snapped
in a summer city hurricane.

Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of eight books of poetry, the editor of five anthologies, and the director of a documentary film about Califone. As publisher and editor, he runs a poetics journal called The Volta, with Afton Wilky, as well as a small press called Letter Machine Editions, which was recently honored by the National Book Awards. He lives in Tucson, where he teaches in the English Department at the University of Arizona.