Page 27 - WTPVolI Vol.#4

The Periodic Table
In my mother’s house
a table stands
in the absence of voices
Its wood is made
of the bones of saints and the dangerous sound of the flute
is in the bones
But the wood is stubborn and will make no music without burning
It is a problem
of muscle memory from the saw of airless space
the size of playing fields
and the nervousness of atoms
If I could speak
as the god Pan spoke before everything he loved was ravaged
I would say to the wood here is the green world Burn
Burn and sing
Originally published in Soundings East.
Wilson is a 2018 NEA Fellow whose work in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Recently shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, he is the recipient of the New Millennium Award for Nonfiction, a Pushcart nominee, and a finalist for the Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize, the Machigonne Fiction Award, the Wordstock Short Fiction Competition (selected by Aimee Bender), and the Fabulist Fiction Prize from Omnidawn Publishing (selected by Lily Hoang). A chapbook of his poems, The Early Word, was published by Burning Deck press. His true crime classic Unsolved has been published in six editions in the United States and United Kingdom.
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