Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Joshua Marie Wilkinson Poems

Joshua Marie Wilkinson Biography

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is an American poet, editor, publisher, and filmmaker. He was born on December 2, 1977, and raised in Haller Lake neighborhood, Seattle, Washington. His given name is Joshua Wilson; his grandmother's name was Marie Wilkinson, after whom he writes and publishes. He earned degrees in Poetry (M.F.A., University of Arizona), Film (M.A., University College Dublin), and English (PhD, University of Denver). He has also edited five anthologies[1] and directed a tour documentary of the band Califone with Solan Jensen released in 2011 by IndiePix. His work appeared at PEN Poetry Series,Academy of American Poets,the Poetry Society of America, Boston Review, and Bomb. His writing has also been featured in many anthologies including both Postmodern American Poetry edited by Paul Hoover and Language Lessons: Vol. 1from Jack White's Third Man Records, which was featured in Rolling Stone, Spin, The Guardian, and elsewhere. He currently teaches creative writing at University of Arizona and is a founding editor of the online literary journal of poetry and poetics The Volta. and a founding editor of the small press Letter Machine Editions, which has been honored by the National Book Award Foundation.)

The Best Poem Of Joshua Marie Wilkinson

A Moth in the Projectorlight [excerpt]

Even if only in photographs—
a laundry truck, seconds after.
Phone in the apartment ringing
above the accident & a coroner
careful enough to stay speechless
until the wind picks up
& the passersby can smell simply
the blood, like fresh wood or
cut metal.

***

A boy of six cups his hands
around a wet moth
as he stands up
in the bathtub
releasing it to the mirrorlight.
Beige wingdust on his palm.

***

Yellow. The room is orange
& black also. Water
a whistle, draining in his mother's tub.

***
This is the part of the story where
you leave
& where I come in.
Wait
there
no—
there
around the corner for the signal:
the greenfinch
your twin sisters will
free from the balcony.

***

Came around
smelling of rye.
Aluminum dust under his
fingernails.

***

Memory opens a little door:
the dark & you listen
with your eyes
& write things in my letter
you'll pretend later
to forget.

***

A kid at the mailbox sings that
your brothers are deader than doorlocks,
that your mother lives
in their teeth.

***

City of
no center, broke-lit
from the team of horses
asleep standing
under the great lamps.

***

A curse of split melon
on the kitchen counter

draws me out into the snowdrift.
White heat from the boy's breath
& the toy house's tiny doorbell
chimes somehow in the empty room
startling the cat.

***

You took your apricot dress to the drycleaners
& left it forever.

***

Haystink, humming street ruckus, moonlit
thumb-slice—
Each evening I peek into that mailbox
for what my father's unable to tell me
on the edge of my own bed
feeling that
morning will scorch
into the sockets of his arms
& that he is
drinking sorry again
Anna sleep
sorry again.

Joshua Marie Wilkinson Comments