light blew open the hutch & a boy saw it
Another snared rabbit speaks through a cut in its neck & the powder keg floats downriver, winnowing. A truck’s lights moisten your knees when a big squall makes an iceblock out of you. Step slowly off the path when the serum tastes of metal.
Coin-operated telephones, laundromat pinball, & airport televisions attached to their seats. What of this will we remember with our hands? What tent will find you as warm night air? How many stories were you asked to bury & which ones did you bury?
The plants grew a hutch around the raccoons & the children grew a city around the hutch.
— Joshua Marie Wilkinson
This poem is from his most recent book called the Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth (Tupelo Press, North Adams, MA, 2009)
You can find more of his work here:
http://eyelashfire.blogspot.com/
http://www.tupelopress.org/books/whisperinghttp://www.uiowapress.org/books/2009-spring/mengert.htm
http://www.tarpaulinsky.com/Press/Figures/index.htmlhttp://uipress.uiowa.edu/books/2006-spring/lugyou.htm
Born and raised in Seattle, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of four books, including a book-length poem centering on the life and work of Egon Schiele called Suspension of a Secret in Abandoned Rooms (Pinball 2005) as well as Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk (U of Iowa Press, 2006), which draws from painters Susan Rothenberg, Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Gwyneth Scally.
His collaboration with poet Noah Eli Gordon, Figures for a Darkroom Voice (Tarpaulin Sky, 2007), features works from visual artist Noah Saterstrom, and a new collaborative book called Selenography (Sidebrow, 2010) will feature Polaroids by Califone’s Tim Rutili. Joshua Marie Wilkinson lives in Chicago and Athens, Georgia.
