Two
poems from Jon Wilkins's Transistor Rodeo
followed
by a note on the author
Love
Song
In
time we will know if it was true.
Lost among the many kindnesses
and lists of tasks to be accomplished
was
a pepper shaker shaped
like a lesser-known saint, and the salt
shaker shaped like the sin
that hunted him all his life.
Lost among it all was how
the
two fit together to form
a porcelain pig whose beauty
could set a Czar's daughter spinning
Birthday
Party for Mr M
By
the time we got to the restaurant, the tables
were already scattered around the room like playing cards
in
an Italian restaurant the morning after a poker game
where one of the players was accused of cheating.
I
can't tell you whether or not he was actually cheating,
or what his name is, but you will have reconstructed
how
smoke and Dean Martin's voice hung in the air
and how sitting on a high glass shelf there was this
glass
jar of pimentoed olives just sitting there like a child's
drawing of the flag of the African nation founded
by
Nangila Mbuso. The European editors of Newsweek
will have noted his "broad shoulders and Afri-can-do attitude."
Today
Mr Mbuso turns three. He lives with his mother
and two brothers, one of whom will be six next month.
Right
now they are playing on dirt paths with sticks
fashioned from fallen African trees with individual names.
©
Jon
Wilkins received his
PhD in biophysics from Harvard University in 2002, and was a
Junior Fellow there for the next three years. During his time
at Harvard he participated in Jorie Graham's poetry workshop.
Since the fall of 2005, he has been a Professor at the Santa
Fe Institute, where he studies theoretical evolutionary biology.
His poems have appeared in the Colorado Review, the Denver
Quarterly, the Midday Moon, Möbius, Moon
Reader, and the River King Poetry Supplement.
