Sunday, August 09, 2009

Nicole Wilson


Mother knows each day’s a face

halved like the planet of a weather report;

she can tell the operator “I like

your telephone voice, I like your dimes

and radios.” Her plane crash is a birth

or a building or stuck levers

or a chord composing to house

all those vertical bodies

unpeeling themselves, and the division

sign she etches on top of the table

is about hands missing

hands missing

a groom. Lungs breathe

the shape of flesh pins and whiskers

like a carousel coming loose.

Nicole Wilson's poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Emprise Review, Babel Fruit, Rabbit Light Movies, and Coconut, among others. She works and teaches at Columbia College Chicago where she received her MFA.