after a line by Wallace Stevens
I, bummed, looping my tinny beat,
alone by my mud pit, into big men,
numbly begin to empty an idiom.
I’m playing Me, bound not by time
but type—moody, benign, minimal—
implying I’m done, but maybe not.
I’m a dim bulb, empty, tying one on,
but I’m beyond my longtime pain.
I may begin numbed in to my plot,
a poet in limbo, but end mymying,
bumping my one byline to admit
I AM TOO DUMBLY IN MY BEING PENT.
Caki Wilkinson
Caki Wilkinson is the author of the poetry collections Circles Where the Head Should Be (2011) and The Wynona Stone Poems (2015). Recent work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Nation, and Kenyon Review, and her third collection, The Survival Expo, will be published in 2021. She lives in Memphis, TN.
Latest posts by Caki Wilkinson (see all)
- Spell of Attraction Performed with the Help of Heroes or Gladiatorsor Those Who have Died a Violent Death - February 23, 2021
- Sinkhole Oracle - October 27, 2020
- When We Were the Queen - October 27, 2020
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