ISSUE 20
May 2002

Ian Randall Wilson

 

Ian Randall Wilson is a managing editor to the poetry journal 88. Recent poetry of his has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review and Poetry East. His first fiction collection, Hunger and Other Stories, has just been published by Hollyridge Press.

East Coast Feed 


My little jet plane
with wings of beagles
has turned into a rowboat,
its hide bottom and teak gunwales
wallowing in this week's low tide.
Unless you're on a juice fast
in the high Sierras
everything is changing this week.
Buildings lose their substance
as smoke assumes the form of claws.
It is difficult to do business
in the burgeoning cloud.
For four days only birds
fly and the common man
reestablishes basic contact with clouds.
I fall in love with right angles
and in the next minutes become
passionate about spoons.
Nothing solid holds
my attention, but the problem
with water is to hit it
will not make it break.
May I borrow your tie
to get myself admitted
to the moment of interspacial tears?
Still the Beloved calls
to order me to open
the Wilson Woodshed.
When the world stops rhyming
people still need boards.
The fewer knot-holes the better,
because in every home
we are looking to finally shore
up the core.
I thought about giving up.
I thought about the Foreign Legion.
For now I'm holding up two fingers
and counting and holding
up two more.
 

 

 

 

Ian Randall Wilson: Poetry
Copyright � 2002 The Cortland Review Issue 20The Cortland Review