A Moth in the Projectorlight [excerpt] Poem by Joshua Marie Wilkinson

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.