Ian Randall Wilson
Alt Everything
Now in the time of the time of the new ignorance,
bodies without vaccine and the pestilence multiplies.
You may call it the little death
though I'm told the council of names
has lost its funding and will disband.
Have you heard this one before? How we had
the greatest pie and now we don't?
But we hope to make pie great again,
setting all the best bakers to work.
Consider the zealots with their torches
wearing sport shirts in their favorite shade of brown
as the armies shun knowing, shun fact.
The worn-out machines sputter,
mechanics gone, the priests have no way to fix them.
Sending thought and prayer into the valley will not turn on the lights.
A homily for faith does not make heat.
If I snap my fingers
and a million butterflies expire
this does not change the fact
that no one knows anything anymore
and so many seem glad to give up knowing
like snow cones snatched away by bullies
we show our teeth.
Even the hammering of nails is an abomination
for if the lord decreed that man should make buildings
surely he would have made our hands of saws,
our legs the source of all
durable lumber. Why clouds
are white and the sky blue
need not concern us. Anymore.
Believe, and the roads will repair themselves.
So will the roofs. And if not, a leak simply a way
to get closer to god's tears.
This, the world I leave to you.
This, the world I leave you to.
If you are brave,
you will venture, but to where?
The wagons have been circled.
There is no world any longer to explore.
Ian Randall Wilson
Borderlands
No divine eyes see through darkness,
unobstructed. Ghosts get in the way.
My grandfather waving
for my attention in the style
of his favorite newsreel tyrant, his voice
as raw and full of smoke as it was
in the hours before he died.
Then he told me
I would never amount
to anything in his eyes,
not even a successful clown.
Now he is part
of the tribe of disappearing
persons whose impression
fades with every passing year,
one more layer
of paint buried beneath
a thousand layers of paint:
At least that's how I remember him.
I wanted to dig him up
where he's buried in the old north field,
turn a little bit of earth
in my own image. Instead I visit
an unknown grave, dance for a half
a minute on its stone. Anyone
who contemplates
their own death knows
how this story turns out.
The elephant room is empty.
The monkeys do not screech.
I have reached the limits of my height
no taller than the shrubs
screening the old porch.
IAN RANDALL WILSON's fiction and and
poetry have appeared in a number of literary journals including the
North American Review, The Gettysburg Review and Alaska
Quarterly Review. A short story collection, Hunger and Other
Stories, was published by Hollyridge Press. His first poetry
collection, Ruthless Heaven, was published by Finishing Line
Press. He has an MFA in Poetry and in Fiction from