Joshua Marie Wilkinson

Three Poems

THE TREES

A man took the door onto his back and the boy with the carp
followed him up the trail to where the trees broke off and the
idling truck waited there for them, fuming softly. I have the
pictures for this but the order is probably wrong. Old waltzes
have their way with me and sleep catches me like a talon in a
children’s book. They see the truck. But the man stops and adjusts
the huge door on the flat of his back and the little boy scratches
a bug off his face, his hair is sweaty, and his carp are dead but flop
as he trudges behind the man with the door.

The truck is waiting at the break in the damp forest. A cool,
open cry like laughter rips up from the bushes before them and
animals lope up the trail and vanish into the brush. This is where
the moon goes missing and the sounds of the lake below kink
into the sounds of the truck. I am perched in the tree and hold
the trunk like a great leg against my body. Things are happening
in my chest.

Down to my last picture when a shorter old man gets out of the
truck to greet the man with the door and his little helper. But the
older man with fuzzy eyebrows stumbles badly and lifts himself
back into the cab of the truck. The moon gets lost. The carp are
whispering against each other in the boy’s little bucket. I have
stones for weapons and I will use them if I have to. I know where
the bats sleep and how many it takes to bring a man down.

What happens next is the man loads the door onto the bed of
the truck, right on top of the crab nets and the old man drives off
through the animal brush. The man lifts the boy onto where the
door had been and says something I cannot hear. The little helper
wraps one arm around the neck of the man and holds the bucket
in the other. I hug the tree trunk and whisper the sound of what
they say back into the eyehole of my camera and click the last
shot as they head back down through the trees.

HISTORY OF THE MOTEL AS INDUSTRY

The oars stood upright against the bed which was propped against
the door of the motel room. The locks had been broken in the
night before and the music we’d learned the shapes of was kicking
something slowly out of us. There was no chimney to climb out
of or field to drift off to. The tub was leaking and my money was
stuffed like cherries in my pockets. Suddenly a woman’s voice
asked us for quiet and we held there. I placed my black hair comb
on my tongue. My little brother tied his shoes together which
meant he would not budge until I made another promise. I made
another promise and her rising voice fell into our faces like a
buzzing.

A HISTORY OF WEATHER

The boy with the rubber boots on pulled his dog from the muck
and hoisted its limp body over his shoulder. This is the field where
I found you out. This is the fable of our looking. The night came
down around us softly like a fire. An opening forced itself upon
you and I was made bashful in the cut of your losses. The boy is
weeping soundlessly and I am here with my hands frozen into
blocks. Even in the pictures I am there.