Caki Wilkinson
Two POEMS
Ullage
Luggage bubbles up
from the sunk stowage
in footage flooding
the internet now.
Some people must watch
a few frames and stop—
I’m all in, over
and over, scanning
windows for shadows
of hands and trying
each time the ship tips
not to end with this:
how I looked, high up
in an old church, once,
where painted angels
swarmed the oculus,
how I thought of bugs
and the low porchlights
that by summer’s end
fill with wings and dim.
WEAPON SALVE
Take stubble from a busted chin,
three drops of sweat unwebbed from one
sprung hand, and two kneefuls of gravel.
Combine with lunchroom shrapnel, scraps
from pigeon practice, blasted glass
and rafters—each in equal measures.
Mix mortar with the dregs of threats
diminished or misunderstood.
Add two parts deer stand, one part woods,
and boy rage thick as tar. Mix well,
applying to the eyes and tongue
and the far darkness shots ring from.
Caki Wilkinson is the author of the poetry collections Circles Where the Head Should Be (2011) and The Wynona Stone Poems (2015). Her recent work has appeared in The Nation, the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, and other magazines. She lives in Memphis.