3 poems by keith wilson

a brief history of rope


call me double-dutch:
if i don't hold fast
impossible to know if what you see
becomes my see, or trace. guy
or twine, who chose to chase
the unryhme of orange?

is what you see as black somehow brown
when mine is crayola
flesh? are bandaids colorblind,
is that why they mismatch?

is your red
not what i red,
or if i stand to reason
full of gravitas

will sanity be another woven thing
knelt like a whale in the back of a trunk?








--





daedelus at sea world


the bovine slowness
of fleshen

great and foam-slow and white spray
of an

apprentice
gasp between

notes









--




i did not kiss the animal

-after rio cortez

with my absence, i cited you,
delivered wandering from the desert
if-not-romantically,
biblically

i did not put a gun against the head
of an animal breathing
rags of insulted air,

i did not smash the blood
accidentally
with my life, my try of life,
and see in its brown eyes
the saucer of myself, scared
and soft
and desperate

afterwards, i did not press the metal
against my lap
to feel its worth.
i did not kiss the animal.



Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow currently living in Chicago.