Kirk Wilson
Bio: Kirk Wilson’s full-length collection of poems, Songbox, is the 2021 Trio Award winner at Trio House Press. His work in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction is widely published in journals including New England Review, Southern Indiana Review, Idaho Review, and others. His awards include an NEA Fellowship and prizes in all three genres. His past publications include The Early Word, a poetry chapbook from Burning Deck press, and Unsolved, a true crime book published in six editions in the US and UK. Kirk’s website is www.KirkWilsonBooks.com.
Trigger Warning: Time
I show up ahead of Time I wait I wait on Time Time’s up Time’s home brushing its teeth
I go ahead and order Time will eat anything
/
Time rushes in The room is empty as a hanging coat The room is crowded up with folks who talk and talk and cannot quit or they’ll be turned to taxidermied birds
Time jumps right through the word in the beginning
Time passes doesn’t say boo
Sit down and have a samwitch Time
/ Time says in its dream somebody’s gone and sealed it off in its own space where it can only see a windowsill and ivy in a flowerpot and all it does is listen to its own hooves and nobuddy grows old for a heartbeat or two or wears out welcome
/ In what order Time wonders will I tell what happens
Somebody leaves somebody Then they’re introduced Then a husk splits and a skinny god drinks up the air
Time is already old when the god approaches in a train station and says I hear
you were beautiful when you were young
In what order can Time tell what happens when Time goes all the way to the beginning and it does not help
/ Time you are the problem of another mind and I am your disciple
If you come home to find out what has changed we won’t even turn on the news We’ll just walk together through the town as comrades and we will not talk just pause every little bit to notice how the hands on our wristwatch glow in the dark and how the showroom floors show empty through the plate glass
/ Time and me hanging out by the river
We watch Pegasus fly over
Somebody calls out from the other side
/
Time wants to go fly a kite
This place is me Time says
It’s what I signed up for
Parthenogenesis going on all over
Souls busy as bumper cars
dozing off and waking up a century ago a thousand years on
Who cares if some things are not easy to remember and other things impossible
Who cares if the places grow cruel or kind with the weather
and wait their moments on the stage like children in a show dressed up in their strange beauty
/
O Time what have you done
You must be the one who holds my lost world captive my animals and shiny leaves
my lead soldiers and the friendless chairs that adhere nowhere except among my neurons
Somewhere I know you keep a box in which you have collected like iridescent marbles the numberless moments I have wasted working not to do the work I owe
You know you have stolen into my heart
I cannot despise you but please give a man a minute
I cannot tell the stories fast enough to save them
/ Hey Time remember when we went down to the river and the children were gathered and we were among them and the trees were sleepy and the distance smoky with autumn and the imaginary world left nothing to imagine
and you cast your shadow on the moment because it was its own dominion and in it were the densities of other rivers children trees distances so many it is against the rules to name them excerpt from Songbox (Trio House Press)
I go ahead and order Time will eat anything
/
Time rushes in The room is empty as a hanging coat The room is crowded up with folks who talk and talk and cannot quit or they’ll be turned to taxidermied birds
Time jumps right through the word in the beginning
Time passes doesn’t say boo
Sit down and have a samwitch Time
/ Time says in its dream somebody’s gone and sealed it off in its own space where it can only see a windowsill and ivy in a flowerpot and all it does is listen to its own hooves and nobuddy grows old for a heartbeat or two or wears out welcome
/ In what order Time wonders will I tell what happens
Somebody leaves somebody Then they’re introduced Then a husk splits and a skinny god drinks up the air
Time is already old when the god approaches in a train station and says I hear
you were beautiful when you were young
In what order can Time tell what happens when Time goes all the way to the beginning and it does not help
/ Time you are the problem of another mind and I am your disciple
If you come home to find out what has changed we won’t even turn on the news We’ll just walk together through the town as comrades and we will not talk just pause every little bit to notice how the hands on our wristwatch glow in the dark and how the showroom floors show empty through the plate glass
/ Time and me hanging out by the river
We watch Pegasus fly over
Somebody calls out from the other side
/
Time wants to go fly a kite
This place is me Time says
It’s what I signed up for
Parthenogenesis going on all over
Souls busy as bumper cars
dozing off and waking up a century ago a thousand years on
Who cares if some things are not easy to remember and other things impossible
Who cares if the places grow cruel or kind with the weather
and wait their moments on the stage like children in a show dressed up in their strange beauty
/
O Time what have you done
You must be the one who holds my lost world captive my animals and shiny leaves
my lead soldiers and the friendless chairs that adhere nowhere except among my neurons
Somewhere I know you keep a box in which you have collected like iridescent marbles the numberless moments I have wasted working not to do the work I owe
You know you have stolen into my heart
I cannot despise you but please give a man a minute
I cannot tell the stories fast enough to save them
/ Hey Time remember when we went down to the river and the children were gathered and we were among them and the trees were sleepy and the distance smoky with autumn and the imaginary world left nothing to imagine
and you cast your shadow on the moment because it was its own dominion and in it were the densities of other rivers children trees distances so many it is against the rules to name them excerpt from Songbox (Trio House Press)
