71. Realizing Lucy by Ronaldo V. Wilson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 15, 2016   71. Realizing Lucy   Ronaldo V. Wilson

At the top of the hill, before the light gives way to the pine that          fractures across the sky, and the farmhouse, opens its door to shadow, there is a signal.   It is not the dead bird, lying out flat and face down in the middle of the      street, its brown belly on the pavement, cooled by the wind.   It is not in my chest, which opens up into sections as I breathe in the          air that almost shocks me into falling face down as I climb the hill.    It is not the breath. It is not the sky, which I haven’t looked at, staring        up at the mountains, which spreads down through the range up the curve.   It is not my knee, which seems at any moment will collapse into if                nothing else, the breaking beneath my legs, the final moment I push up, towards the      end of the light.   There are shadows which cover the sign: SUN, painted in blue at the            peak of the hill.  So, where, today, will I direct my anger?   Where will I turn, running past the women, who hover up the road, no         cars, crawling into their beers in the middle of the day?   Fat and White. I refuse to grow any fatter, or to not tan. This summer, I burn off another self, sprinting up the high hill of my own making,   burning Kcals toward the peak of my own release.  In this face, “What a        view?”— someone asking another. Was I supposed to seek something else into          which to slip?            Copyright © 2016 Ronaldo V. Wilson. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “‘71. Realizing Lucy’ is part of a series of seventy-two persona poems from my forthcoming collection, Lucy 72, unveiling race as slippery vantage points: thin white woman / fat brown man, or plain girl / bulky boy, flash of light, rocks, streams, running, simmering, retreating. When I started this book in 2003, I took my cue from a number of works, including Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination, its animation of the figure of the imagined black man born to the murderess Susan Smith; Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, its depiction of the racialized flow between the protagonist and Norton, somewhere between A black amorphous thing and a force; and Adrian Piper’s The Mythic Being series, its conceptual polyvalent self as meditation / grid / ritual / analysis—after these, my Lucy, here, floats somewhere between subjectivity, desire, and being.” —Ronaldo V. Wilson   Ronaldo V. Wilson is the author of Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015). He teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Poetry by Wilson   Farther Traveler: Poetry, Prose, Other (Counterpath Press, 2015) "My Skeleton" by Jane Hirshfield "Disciplines [This is how much fortuitiveness weighs]" by Dawn Lundy Martin "Tours" by C. D. Wright Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038