DASH, CHURN
Mother knows each day’s a face
halved like the planet of a weather report;
she can tell the operator “I like
your telephone voice, I like your dimes
and radios.” Her plane crash is a birth
or a building or stuck levers
or a chord composing to house
all those vertical bodies
unpeeling themselves, and the division
sign she etches on top of the table
is about hands missing
hands missing
a groom. Lungs breathe
the shape of flesh pins and whiskers
like a carousel coming loose.
Nicole Wilson's poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, Emprise Review, Babel Fruit, Rabbit Light Movies, and Coconut, among others. She works and teaches at Columbia College Chicago where she received her MFA.